Reader Comments and Retorts

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I use Win Shares as the base for my ranking system, though I am now using a modified version (any negative values are converted into zeroes) of BRAR, FRAR and PRAR for the NA.

I am integrating the conclusions made by DERA with Win Shares for all pitchers.

I do place (to a certain degree) domination at one's position during the player's era. That doesn't mean that domination-by-default will necessarily help you though (Gil Hodges may have been the best first baseman of his era, but he wont make my ballot).

1) Lou Whitaker-2B (n/e): Best AL second baseman of the Eighties. I knew Whitaker would do well in my system, but not to the point that I would have him above Winfield. It enforces my view that the failure to even keep him on the HOF ballot for a second year was ludicrous. Best AL second baseman for 1982, 1984, 1985 and 1988. Best ML second baseman for 1983 and close in 1988.

2) Dave Winfield-RF/LF/DH/CF (n/e): He was not as great as his record-breaking salary with the Yanks would suggest, but if you like long careers of sustained quality, you have to love Winfield. Best NL right fielder for 1976. Best ML right fielder for 1979 (close in 1976). Close to being the best DH in 1992.

3) Bus Clarkson-SS/3B (5): Looks like the best shortstop of the Forties, which is surprising to me. IMO, Eric would have to be totally off with his projections for Clarkson not to be near the top of everybody's ballot. Shave off 50 WS from his MLE and he still comfortably belongs.

4) Roger Bresnahan-C/CF (6): Greatest catcher of the Deadfall Era not named Santop. The poor man's Buck Ewing (Johnny Kling was the poor man's Charlie Bennett) is still good enough to be here on my ballot. Slightly better than Noisy behind the plate, but the Duke played longer and at other positions. Best major league catcher for 1905, 1906, and 1908. Best major league centerfielder for 1903.

5) Charley Jones-LF/CF (7): He was playing a more difficult position than the one that it evolved into. I gave him a little more credit for his (unfairly) blacklisted years. Best major league leftfielder for 1877, 1879 and 1884. Best AA centerfielder for 1883. Best AA leftfielder for 1885 (close to being the best in the majors).

6) Bucky Walters-P (8): The guy had a nice peak, fairly long career, and could hit. Best ML pitcher of 1939 (extremely close in 1940). Best NL pitcher of 1940 and 1944.

7) Mickey Welch-P (9): Yeah, pitching was different back then, but he still distinguished himself regardless. Best major league pitcher for 1885.

8) Pete Browning-CF/LF (10): Gotta love the peak! Best major league second baseman for 1882. Best major league leftfielder for 1883 (close in 1890). Best AA centerfielder for 1885. Best major league centerfielder for 1887.

9) Vic Willis-P (11): Willis pitched a ton of innings at an above-average rate for a long enough time for his era. Best major league pitcher for 1899. Best NL pitcher for 1901.

10) Gavvy Cravath-RF (12): I'm finally buying the arguments for him. I'm giving him MLE credit for 1908-11. Possibly would have been the best ML right fielder for 1910. Best NL right fielder for 1913 and 1914. Best ML right fielder for 1915, 1916, and 1917.

11) Alejandro Oms-CF (13): Thanks to Chris' work, another gem has been uncovered. He should gather more and more support over the next few "years."

12) Bob Elliott-3B/RF (14): Best third baseman of the Forties. He could hit, field, and didn't have a short career. Best ML third baseman for 1943, 1944, 1947, 1948, and close in 1950. Best NL third baseman for 1949 and 1950.

13) Hugh Duffy-CF/LF/RF (15): "Only" the third best centerfielder of the '90s, but that position was very strong for that decade. Best major league right fielder for 1890 and 1891. Best major league centerfielder for 1892, 1893 and 1894.

14) Pie Traynor-3B (n/e): Back on my ballot after a 1-year absence. Best white third baseman of his time (though J. Wilson and Beckwith was better). Best major league third baseman for 1923 (Beckwith was better), 1925, 1927, 1929 (Beckwith was better) and 1932.

15) Burleigh Grimes-P (n/e): Lie Pie, he has his spot on my ballot again. Pitched for a long time behind crappy teams and defenses. Not a bad peak, too Best NL pitcher for 1921 and 1929.

Redding, Randolph, Perez and Stieb all exist in my top-35, but they just fall short.

This is my definitive 2001 ballot, as I'm out for 2 weeks from 27th. Please could some kind soul post it on the ballot thread when that appears. I don't think I'm particularly controversial on the newbies anyway.

Winfield, even more than Paul Waner is a clone of Jake Beckley and so ranks top. Whitaker when you correct by about 20 OPS+ points for fielding position (2B and good at it) is 2367 hits @137, clearly the right side of line, below Stephens but above Schang. Puckett’s low in consideration set; about 10 OPS+ points short of ballot – if you add a mythical tail to his career, his lifetime OPS+ goes down.
Mattingley: if your best player was Don Mattingley, could you win the pennant? Yankee fans 1982-95 found the answer was no.
Parrish just off bottom of consideration set, but close. Van Slyke and Gibson (not all that good even at his peak) well off the bottom.

1. (N/A) Dave Winfield. At last we have found a Beckley clone, when you add a little for Beckley’s fielding position and shorter seasons. 3110 hits @129. TB+BB/PA .513, TB+BB/Outs .752

2. (N/A-7-7-6-8-6-6-7-7-6-7-7-7-9-8-7-7-4-5-3-3-3-5-4-4-4-6-4-4-4-5-2-2
-4-4-3-3-5-4-3-2-2-3-5-2) Addie Joss. I’m now even more convinced I missed him earlier, and that adjusting innings down for dead ball pitchers is illegitimate. 2327 IP at an ERA+ of 142. 160-97 by age 30. If you assume the rest of his career would have been 1800 IP, 120-90 with an ERA+ of 110 (somewhat conservative, assuming you boost his last sick season, though pitchers didn’t last as long as they did later) then 50% credit would put him at 3227IP, 220-142, with ERA+ of 130. 25% credit puts him at 2777 IP, 190-120, with ERA+ of 136. Substantially better than Koufax. OPS+20. Electorate needs to take him more seriously.

3. (N/A-10-8-7-6-4-3-3-5-9-7-8-6-4-4-4-6-4-5-6-5-4-6-7-6-5-5-6-7-5-5-4-
4-5-4-6-4-4-5-4-4-5-4-4-6-5-5-5-6-7-5-5-6-7-6-5-5-7-5-5-5-6-3-4-7-6-4-4-6-5-4-3-3-4-6-3) Eddie Cicotte. Only 208-149 and an ERA+ of 123, but 3223 IP, more than Waddell and should get about 25% of the bonus for the 300-win career he should have had (he was, after all, a knuckleballer, who tend to peak late.) Much better than the 20s glut – only loses to Welch on longevity – Newhouser a close comp, but Cicotte had a longer career. Successfully cursed Red Sox AND White Sox for over 8 decades!

4. (N/A-10-9-8-10-11-10-13-12-14-N/A-15-14-13-12-11-10-10-11-9-9
-10-11-10-10-10-11-11-10-9-10-7-8-11-10-8-8-10-9-5-4-4-5-7-4) Ernie Lombardi. Up a bit more; we’re forgetting him. Berra closely comparable Berra. 2137 hits, normalized to a 130 game season, and an OPS+ of 125 makes him a little better than Schang, but some of it was during the war years and he fielded badly. TB+BB/PA .492, TB+BB/Outs .719., the ratio between the two very low because of strikeouts, I assume. Plus a great nickname!

5. (N/A-14-15-14-13-14-15-14-15-14-15-15-13-12-13-10-11-13-12-10-
11-12-11-6-5-5-6-8-5) Vern Stephens. Short career – only 1859 hits, but comparing him to Reese he was much better, and not far short of Doerr. TB+BB/PA .508, TB+BB/Outs .756. OPS+ 119 Best season 1944, however. Sliding up ballot.

6. (N/A) Lou Whitaker 2369 hits at 117, TB+BB/PA.486 TB+BB/Outs.735 Correct him for being a 2B and he’s clearly a little better than Schang on career length but not quite Stephens, though one could go either way on that. Definitely short of Lombardi, though.

7. (N/A-9-8-8-9-10-8-10-9-8-7-8-11-11-10-10-10-11-11-10-9-11-12-
11-14-13-11-13-13-13-13-12-11-14-13-12-11-11-12-10-10-11-12-11
-11-11-13-13-11-10-11-8-9-12-11-9-10-11-12-8-7-7-9-10-6) Wally Schang. When you normalize his career to 130 game seasons for the first 18 years, as I do for catchers, he gets to 1941 hits, more than Groh at an OPS+ of 117, very similar. Furthermore, TB+BB/PA=.455, TB+BB/Outs=.728, also significantly better than Groh, over very close to the same period. And he was a catcher, more difficult than 3B.

9. (N/A-15-N/A-5-4-4-6-10-8-9-7-5-5-5-7-5-6-7-6-6-7-8-7-6-6-7-8-6-6-5-
5-6-5-7-5-5-6-6-5-6-5-5-7-6-6-6-7-8-6-6-7-8-7-6-6-8-6-6-6-7-4-5-8-7-5-5-7-6-10-9-9-11-12-8) Pete Browning. Recalculating, to adjust ’82 as well as ’83-’92, he had 2,177 “normalized” hits, with no AA discount. However, TB+BB/PA .511, TB+BB/Outs .855. the same as Tiernan, not quite as good as Thompson, but he got no significant boost from the 1893-94 run explosion. Career OPS+162 vs. 146 Thompson and 138 Tiernan, but you have to discount a bit for AA. Also discount for not playing full seasons; the normalized hits should thus be about 1900, so drop him to just above Hondo.

10. (N/A-12-10-12-10-11-10-7-7-8-9-7-9-13-11-10-11-12-12-11-11-11-
12-12-11-11-12-13-12-15-14-12-14-11-10-11-11-10-12-11-10-9-9-
10-8-8-9-10-9-8-8-10-10-9-8-9-6-7-10-9-7-7-9-8-7-6-6-8-9-9) Sam Leever. Pity he wasn’t able to start at the normal time; 2 more years would have made him a NB. Only 2660 innings, but was blocked till 27 by the one-league 1890s and having a steady job as a schoolteacher. Believe he needs to be looked at seriously by others, and included in pitcher analysis. Mild plus for high level of moral probity.

13. (N/A-13-12-13-13-12-14-15-12-13-11-11-N/A-11-9-12-12-N/A-15-15-N/A-14-N/A-15-13-12-14-15-12) George van Haltren. Had slipped too far at #44; we need more 90s stars.

14. (N/A-11-12-11-11-12-13-14-12-15-15-15-15-N/A-15-N/A-13) Carl Mays Had slipped down too far. 3021 innings at 119, 207-126 and 83 OPS+ Others should look at him more closely.

15. (N/A-6-5-9-8-9-8-7-10-11-8-9-7-7-6-6-9-9-8-6-6-6-5-4-8-7-9-12-
N/A-14-13-15-N/A-14) Hugh Duffy. Back on ballot after more than 60 years; we don’t have enough Beaneaters!

OFF BALLOT

16. (15-14-11-12-10-9-6-8-7-7-6-7-6-3-3-3-2-3-2-2-3-2-4-5-4-2-3-2-3-3-
2-3-3-2-2-3-7-5-5-3-2-2-2-4-2-3-3-2-2-4-3-2-2-3-3-4-2-3-2-2-3-2-4-2-2-
3-2-2-3-2-2-4-2-3-2-2-4-2-2-2-4-3-3-3-4-2-2-2-2-N/A-15) Mickey Welch. UER were 43.37% of total runs allowed for Mickey, compared to about 40% with all his HOM contemporaries except Galvin (who started earlier, anyway.) Hence his ERA+, his weakness anyway, overstates his value; in spite of 307-210 he was primarily an innings-eater. 4802IP. Will now be on and off ballot.

17. (N/A-15-N/A-14-13-15-N/A) Rusty Staub. 2716 hits at OPS+124. TB+BB/PA .484, TB+BB/Outs .724. Not quite as good as Beckley, for not quite as long.

18. (N/A-12-N/A) Fred Lynn. Underrated, considerably better than Rice or Hernandez. 1960 hits at 130, but bonus for playing CF. TB+BB/PA .531, TB+BB/Outs .791. Lovely player to watch, and absolutely top-drawer at his best.

19. Reggie Smith
20. (N/A-14-N/A-15-13-15-N/A-15-N/A) Luis Tiant 229-172. 3486 IP at 114. ERA+ a little low, but W/L good. He’s not top tier, but just a little better than Pierce. Big psychic plus for Red Sox affiliation. Looking at Reuschel, a little overplaced so have slipped him down.

21. (N/A-13-15-N/A-15-15-N/A) Vic Willis Had slipped too far.

22. Gavvy Cravath 1134 hits@150. Add 50% to career and deduct 5 points for more years in early career makes him 1699 hits @145, still a very short career, but comparable to Hack. TB+BB/PA .527, TB+BB/Outs .835.

23. Dave Stieb 176-137 very unimpressive but 122 ERA+ for 2895 innings more so. Moved up a little as I don’t think he’s far below Gossage.

24. (N/A-7-13-11-13-14-14-14-N/A-15-15-15-N/A-14-15-15-15-N/A-
14-N/A-15-15-N/A-15-N/A-14-N/A-15-14-N/A) Hack Wilson. TB+BB/PA = .588, TB+BB/Outs = .954, OPS+ 144. (he does appear to have known about BB, unlike some others.) Very short career, but quality too good to ignore.

25. Rick Reuschel. 214-191, 3548IP@114. Tough to put him far from Tiant, who had a better W/L, but I now realized I was overvaluing Tiant a bit because of Red Sox affiliation.

26. (N/A-15-N/A) Alejandro Oms. New MLE OPS+ of 125 moves him down a bit. Shorter career than Beckley, and not quite as valuable, but he was a darn good player nonetheless.

27. (N/A-14-14-N/A) Chuck Klein. Shortish career but very good one. Similar player to Beckwith, beats Hack on career length, but Hack was better. TB+BB/PA .575, TB+BB/Outs .909, but only 2076 hits. OPS+137.

28. Indian Bob Johnson. Very similar career to Klein but infinitesimally less good. TB+BB/PA .569, TB+BB/Outs .890., only 2051 hits. OPS+138

30. Roger Bresnahan. Moves up on re-examination, but not close enough to see the ballot because even with a catcher bonus his career is short 1252 hits @126, maybe 1500 with catcher bonus, since he played OF in a lot of his catcher seasons. About 2/3 catcher takes him to 140-142 but 1500 @140-142 is close but no cigar, given Klein and Johnson. TB+BB/PA .447, TB+BB/Outs .719. Lombardi and Schang very clearly better.

1. Don Mattingly should have got a ring in 94 (makes my personal HoM this year)
2. Kirby Puckett was there ever athlete who lost his reputation like he did (makes my personal HoM this year)
3. Pie Traynor most 3B putouts 7 times (made my personal HoM in 1942)
4. Chuck Klein 4 hr titles 1 triple crown (made my personal HoM in 1951)
5. Tony Oliva most hits 5 times (made my personal HoM in 1983)
6. Mickey Welch please see his thread (made my personal HoM all the way back in 1898)
7. Sam Rice imagine if he would have started earlier (made my personal HoM in 1940)
8. Dave Winfield probably underrating him due to his New York years (makes my personal HoM this year)
9. Pete Browning 13th in career batting avg. (made my personal HoM in 1906)
10. Hack Wilson 4 hr titles RBI season record (made my personal HoM in 1940)
11. Hugh Duffy had 100 runs or RBIs every full year he played (made my personal HoM in 1908)
12. Addie Joss 2nd in era (made my personal HoM in 1918)
13. George Kell very good hitter and fielder at important and under elected position (made my personal HoM in 1963)
14. Bill Madlock 4 batting tittles (made my personal HoM in 1994)
15. Al Oliver 1 batting title (made my personal HoM in 1991)
16. Jim Rice hit 300 7 times (made my personal HoM in 1995)
17. Harvey Kuenn led AL shortstops in putouts twice assists once (made my personal HoM in 1972)
18. Heinie Manush 330 batting avg. (made my personal HoM in 1957)
19. Hilton Smith see his thread (made my personal HoM in 1964)
20. Ray Schalk the best catcher ever (made my personal HoM in 1938)
21. George Van Haltren 31st in runs (made my personal HoM in 1925)
22. Jimmy Ryan 30th in runs (made my personal HoM in 1926)
23. Luis Aparicio being a better offensive player then Rabbit puts him here (made my personal HoM in 1979)
24. Jake Daubert 29th in triples (made my personal HoM in 1930)
25. Bobby Veach most doubles twice (made my personal HoM in 1931)
26. Bill Mazeroski 2nd greatest (fielding) 2nd baseman (McPhee‘s 1) ever (made my personal HoM in 1985)
27. Roy Thomas most times on base 6 times (made my personal HoM in 1985)
28. Dave Parker would be higher with out his extra credit (made my personal HoM in 1997)
29. Gavvy Cravath most active HRs 1918, 1919 and 1920 (made my personal HoM in 1928)
30. Lou Brock like the steals more then most (made my personal HoM in 1985)
31. Kiki Cuyler 2299 hits (made my personal HoM in 1967)
32. Lloyd Waner had the most OF putouts 4 times, finished 2nd once and finished 3rd twice (made my personal HoM in 1967)
33. Ginger Beaumont 1902 batting title (made my personal HoM in 1932)
34. John McGraw 3rd in on base percentage (made my personal HoM in 1930)
35. Steve Garvey 200 hits 6 times (made my personal HoM in 1994)
36. Jim Bottomley 2313 hits (made my personal HoM in 1968)
37. Levi Meyerle best rate season ever (made my personal HoM in 1975)
38. Eddie Yost most walks 6 times most times on base 3 times (made my personal HoM in 1987)
39. Rabbit Maranville best shortstop before Ozzie moves down do to reading accounts on how his drinking hurt his team more then the numbers show(made my personal HoM in 1939)
40. George J. Burns most walks 5 times (made my personal HoM in 1932)
41. Orlando Cepada 297 batting avg 379 HRs (made my personal HoM in 1987)
42. Stuffy McInnis led in fielding% 6 times (made my personal HoM in 1987)
43. Deacon Phillippe best walks/9 IP in the 20th centaury (made my personal HoM in 1988)
44. Babe Adams led in WHIP 5 times (made my personal HoM in 1992)
45. Jack Morris in short (because unfortunately I don‘t have time to post an extensive search on the subject) looking over retrosheet I found his ERA to be inflated somewhat by a few bad performances that overstate his ERA to win expectation leading many to believe his win record was inflated by his teammates more then I think is true though I found his teamates did prevent him from getting the loss what appears to be more then normal
for example in 1984 he went 19-11 with a 3.60 era though he only had 2 wins where he gave up more then 4 ER
there a basically few games in which rose his ERA to heights above his expected win level give him the loss but each of these games effects his era more then 1 game should.
on 6-2-1984 in 6.0 IP he gave up 5 runs 5 being ER raising his era from 1.88 to 2.20 getting the loss
on 6-12-1984 in 3.0 IP he gave up 6 runs 6 being ER raising his era from 2.11 to 2.51 getting the loss
on 6-29-1984 in 5.2 IP he gave up 5 runs 5 being ER raising his era from 2.39 to 2.63 getting the loss
on 7- 3-1984 in 4.1 IP he gave up 8 runs 8 being ER raising his era from 2.63 to 3.08 getting the loss
on 7- 18-1984 in 4.0 IP he gave up 7 runs 7 being ER raising his era from 2.99 to 3.34 getting the loss
on 8- 7-1984 in 1.1 IP he gave up 9 runs 8 being ER raising his era from 3.08 to 3.34 getting the loss
on 8-16-1984 in 3.2 IP he gave up 7 runs 7 being ER raising his era from 3.57 to 3.84with a no decision (give him the loss here but don’t take away the wins he did get from him)
(made my personal HoM in 2000)
46. Buddy Myer 1935 batting title (made my personal HoM in 1996)
47. Cecil Cooper most rbi twice (made my personal HoM in 1997)
48. George H. Burns most hits twice gets PCL credit (made my personal HoM in 1998)

explanation for players not on my ballot
Dick Redding barring new evidence not one will make my ballot (the HoF vote has absolutely no bearing on my vote )
Charley Jones no black list points
Willie Randolph needs more peak could possibly make my pHoM one day but it would probably be in (real) years time
Lou Whitaker I like Randolph a lot better and look where it got him
Tony Perez needs more of a peak to meet with his career
Bucky Walters would have been in my pHoM with out WWII adjustments as he is he’s still close to it
Roger Bresnahan played to much outfield
Bob Johnson with out WWII adjustments is borderline with them he’s quite a bit lower
Dave Stieb I have many 80’s pitchers above him Fernando, John, Viola ex.

2001 Ballot –I use a little of WS, WARP, RCAA, OPS+, and traditional stats, as well as reputation. I’m putting bWS/700PA and pWS/300IP, plus my broad All-Star candidates, and MVP/Cy Young candidates for fun.

I can't believe Kirby didn't crack my ballot. I've never had an issue with him in the HOF and never imagined I wouldn't be voting for him in the HOM election. Amazingly I have Mattingly closer to my ballot.
Stieb is in the same position as Randolph way down my ballot with other 80's pitchers like Viola and Morris. I have not and will not be voting for Cannonball. Perez has been on my ballot but has moved down some and is now just a shade below Puckett.

1. Charley Jones - was a stud before being blacklisted and a stud after. I obviously give him credit for his blacklisted years.

2. Gavy Cravath - I say good for him for taking advantage of the park he was given to play in. If everyone else could have done it, they'd have never lost a game.

3. Dave Winfield - wonderful career candidate

4. Orlando Cepeda - never great, but very good for a long time

5. Bucky Walters - doesn't have the typical career value I like, but an odd player that my system likes.
6. Don Newcombe - if you give him any NeL and war credit, he has outstanding career value

7. Lou Whitaker - I like him tremendously better than Randolph who is no where close to my ballot.
8. Bus Clarkson - I'm willing to speculate that he was better than Stephens

9. Bruce Sutter - the only reliever from this era that's close to my ballot now

2001 Ballot
Use a sort of peak-over career number that measures ink by playing time. Combined with rate stats and a glove measurement, I feel this gives me both context for what the player actually achieved versus what the league around him was able to do. I think it also may be time to go a little more into my baseball philosophy, which may help in clarifying my rankings. I don't believe in the single stat theory of baseball, meaning I don't use WS or WARP in my rankings. Essentially, I follow this as I think a large percentage of what contributes to baseball is not counted. Well, no one has ever counted them as statistics as far as I've ever heard. This includes things like manager's prerogative, and actions that would require a historical pbp analysis currently unavailable. I search for what I consider "total ballplayers", guys who can do it all. I believe in positional representation and abhor the thought process that says that relievers were all failed starters and 2B are all failed SS, etc... A team cannot win without a 2B, nor without someone in LF. When I look at a player's career, I try to ask myself how I would feel about him as his manager - would his presence require special tactics to protect him, or is he completely reliable. I hope it can be seen by my rankings that the reliable players generally rise above the ones with clear holes in their games. There are always exceptions, but this is what I have. The stats I look at to get here tend to be traditional and rate, both offensive and defensive. Contemporary opinion also helps.
No slam dunks this year, but still three candidates that rise above the backlog - Winfield, Puckett and Whitaker all waltz directly into my PHOM. AMong other candidates, Mattingly and Parrish impressed, but not enough for the 15 man ballot. They start off at 23 and 35, respectively. Tom Henke had enough peak to pop up at 78. Jose Rijo and Andy Van Slyke make their respective positional consideration sets. Still heading my personal backlog are Willie Randolph, Dave Stieb and Al Oliver.

1)Hugh Duffy - Super peak, wonderful prime. Amazing bat, super glove. (PHOM)
2)Ben Taylor - Can't find the peak, but a better prime (through the roof), career and glove than Beckley. I think he may be the player most underrated by the electorate. (PHOM)
3)Tommy Bridges - He was really very good. A summary of a reevaluation of some of our backlog pitchers in my high backlog (Bridges, Gomez, Redding, Walters) Of those four, the white guys were all regulars for 10-11 seasons. Bucky and Lefty both had immense peaks, but I think that Lefty's non-peak years hold up better than Bucky's. Also, Lefty does not need any war discount. Dick Redding seems more similar to Walters in that his non-peak was not so impressive. His peak was still enough to leave in him solid backlog country. (I even put him in my PHOM back when I joined the project.) Tommy Bridges wins out. He had much greater consistency. He is to pitchers what Bob Johnson was to hitters, but more of a winner. As we see the upcoming dearth of good pitching candidates, I urge everyone to give Tommy Bridges a closer look.(PHOM)
4)Dave Winfield - Said to be one of the greatest hitters of all time never to have won an MVP award. My examination of his case shows why. He never had a huge season, but he was an understated sort of excellent year in year out. (PHOM)
5)Kirby Puckett - I have it mentioned that some HOM voters consider Puckett to be a mistake of the BBWAA. I see where that sentiment may be emanating from, but I do beleive that his election was earned A wonderful ballplayer. (PHOM)
6)Lefty Gomez - looking at him in any single way hurts him. Looking at him kaleidoscopically has him as the best available pitcher in my eyes (PHOM)
7)Lou Whitaker - If the retention of Willie Randolph on our collective ballot has a positive side effect, I think it is the chance to compare him to Sweet Lou. Lou was a better hitter, a comparable gloveman and had better durability. Essentially, he is a better candidate for the HOM. (PHOM)
8) Charley Jones - he got the shaft - but I am not convinced as to what extent. A little reconsideration bump here. I give partial blacklist credit. I tend to be liberal with credit, but I don't think he deserves full credit. That said, even with the partial credit I am giving him (2 full years), I now see that he was rather durable in season, and he seems to have been a solid defender. (PHOM)
9)Vern Stephens - Will we look at Nomar down the road like we look at Vern now? Great bat, good glove. (PHOM)
10)Dale Murphy - A player that my system loves. At his best he dominated. That refers to the years between 1979-1988. That's a 10 year prime with a very high peak. Also demonstrated very good fielding ability. Could easily move up my ballot. (PHOM)
11)Gavvy Cravath - No longer the worst fielder in my top 120 candidates (Frank Howard). Probably still the best hitter, though. (PHOM)
12)Bob Johnson - I don't know why it took me this long. Great all-round LF. Very durable. (PHOM)
13)Willie Randolph - Long career, solid bat, solid glove. My system has him as very comparable to, but slightly below, Fox. Less durable, less glove. Nothing to be ashamed of though. Would make a worthy member of the Hall of Merit if it comes to that this year.
14)Bobby Veach - He did it all well. As complete a LF as is available today. (PHOM)
15)Orlando Cepeda (PHOM)

2001 ballot - the rest
16)Dave Stieb - I wish I liked him more. Still like him plenty enough, though. On pace to be a future HOM and PHOM member. I still remember where I was when he finally threw his no-hitter.
17)Al Oliver - I was surprised by the similarities between Oliver and Reggie Smith. Smith had the higher OPS+, but I fear it may be a bit hollow. Oliver trumps Reggie (and Wally Berger) in light of his more convincing peak and a glove that scores better than the other two. Career length is nice as well.
18)Tony Oliva - another big jump. Career not as short as I thought. A world class hitter.((18a)Dwight Evans - I honestly held no real memory of him as a player from my childhood, but he gains my respect with a long drawn out prime who (at various times) was an exceptional hitter and fielder. Prefer the peak of Oliva, but I can understand a valid comparison between him and Bob Johnson. Better than Darrell.))
19)Jack Clark - Marvelous hitter who had his uses in the field as well.
20)Jim Rice - This is, more or less, where the in-out line can be found.
21)Wally Berger - super-underrated
22)Dizzy Dean - Diet Sandy Koufax. 0 calories (career), no sugar (prime).
23)Don Mattingly - In the interest of my belief in a big hall for Cooperstown, I suppport Mattingly's induction. That said, for this project, he looks to be just the wrong side of the door.
24)Bus Clarkson - I failed to give him credit as a SS earlier. More shades of Quincy. The good doctor's new numbers have been added to my spread sheet, but I have not given him any of a readjustment yet as I wait to see how the electorate takes the info. Solid chance he will make my ballot next year though.((24a)Darrell Evans - Thanks to Chris Cobb for correcting a flaw in my judgment that was worth 8 spots on this ballot. Being a third basemen for 2 more years would have been worth another 8 spots or so.))
25)Dan Quisenberry - I suppose I've decided that I value peak in a reliever over career totals. Mind you, if the guy has both...well, we'll see what happens with Goose in a few years.
26)Bruce Sutter - Very curious to see if anyone else has him as their highest ranked reliever right now. Shorter career than the others, but when he was at his best, he was the best. That works for me.
27)Ernie Lombardi - defense was below average, but not quite horrible((27a)Jimmy Wynn))
28)Alejandro Oms - This is a serious jump for him in my rankings (nearly 60 places). I was counting him as a RF only. The hybrid time gets him here, just above Reggie Smith. This could change. Right now I have provisionally given him a career as a 50% CF.
29)Reggie Smith - Another challenge. Uncertainties about his defense keep him from challenging my top half. Moves back up a bit as the clouds pass and I see much to compare between R. Smith and J. Wynn.
30)Dick Redding - One of the toughest for me to accurately place (PHOM)
31)Ron Guidry - I love a dominant pitcher. I don't think it's necessarily correct to view pitchers and hitters in the same light and I value a strong peak (I mean really strong) for pitchers more than for hitters (prefer a steady, all round type there). Similar to, but not quite the equal of, Lefty Gomez, one of my inner circle of best friends.
32)Al Rosen - One more season in prime, and he is top 10
33)Mickey Welch((33a)Jim Bunning - He had merits, but not enough for balloting. Benefits from my re-examination of ink.))
((33b)Billy Pierce))
34)Sparky Lyle - The biggest surprise of my remodeled reliever system. I don't look at postseason heroics so much, but for those who give plaudits for Fingers' work, check out Sparky. Great peak, very consistent.
35)Lance Parrish - SOlid all round catcher. Proud member of the HoVG. Not quite the HOM though.
36)Ron Cey - I remember his late Topps cards. Lots of very small print on the back. He compares favourably to the other eligible 3Bs. I'd still take Rosen's monster peak over his steady production, but it's close.
37)Norm Cash - Too much in one year - and that was not the best year for an everlasting peak, for a number of reasons.((37a)Joe Gordon - Neither here nor there. Not the peak, nor the career. War credit obviously helps him, but not enough for me.))
((37b)Dobie Moore - Peak too short, not enough surrounding it. Wreckers play helps, but not enough at present.))
38)Addie Joss - ERA/+ and WHIP are great, but why so little black ink?((38a)Cupid Childs))
39)Fred Dunlap - Very short career. Very good, too.((39a)Rollie Fingers - When he was on, forget about it. Unfortunately, I don't feel that he was on consistently enough to merit anything much higher than this.))
40)Bucky Walters - Very similar to Pierce in overall picture - but built differently.
41)Don Newcombe - big beneficiary of pitcher's fielding analysis.
42)Tommy John - I think I like his overall picture just a smidgen more than Sutton's. ((42a)Don Sutton - Had a peak, but not an exceptional one. His durability pushes him above Tiant.))
43)Luis Tiant - Undoubtedly a wonderful pitcher, but of the type who don't do that well in my system.I wasn't Billy Pierce's biggest fan, but I still liked Billy (and Marichal and Bunning) more than Tiant, so he starts off over here.
44)Tony Perez - I wasn't giving him the extra glove credit he earned through 5 seasons as the Reds' 3B. Still, no peak. As far as 1B go, I have Cepeda up higher because of his very nice peak and his not too short career as a regular. Ben Taylor suffers from a lack of documented stats. The stats there show that he could flat out mash the ball by dead-ball standards. Contemporaries say his glove was the best they had ever seen at 1B. Very apt, in this year of the Hernandez discussion. How much as a scoop worth? I think it's worth alot. I maintain that while a below average defensive 1B can cause little harm, an above average glove at 1B will provide a hefty bonus to the team lucky enough to employ one.
45)Fred Carroll - I give him around 1.5 seasons prime MiL credit. Better than Tenace.
46)Larry Doyle - If only the glove were just a little better.
47)Phil Rizzuto
48)Cecil Travis - A very worthy extra credit case.((48a)Jake Beckley - Always very good. No peak, all prime. Defense is overrated. I have read about his arm being so weak (and erratic) that runners were able to take the extra base on him. Not sure how that works at 1B, but worth noting. See Perez comment for more about my 1B thoughts.))
49)Jimmy Ryan
50)Fred Lynn - Very similar to Duffy and Roush. Loses a lot of ground due to in-season durability concerns for an otherwise very strong candidate. Should be appealing to Browning/Chance/McGraw supporters who overlook that sort of thing.((50a)Charlie Keller)))
51)Cy Williams
52)Amos Otis
53)Dolf Camilli
54)Fielder Jones - I was missing on him a bit. A very apt first name. Solid bat as well.
55)Pete Browning - A superior masher, but a horrible person to have on your team. No defensive value whatsoever and very very poor durability. Worse than most contemporary catchers.
56)Steve Garvey - Something between Perez and McCormick. Nice size career, defensive value, could hit a bit - nothing overwhelming though.
57)Jim Bottomley - More than just a Frankie Frisch mistake.
58)George Kell
59)Frank McCormick - One of the finest 1B gloves in MLB hitter, and a decent hitter as well.
60)Bob Elliott - A little 3B run here
61)Graig Nettles - Among 3B, I figure he sits nicely here between Elliott and Bando. The better question to ask is if I am underrating 3B in general. I'll have to look into it a bit more later. Nettles is the best defensive 3B on my ballot. I think he was better than Boyer as well.
62)Sal Bando
63)Buddy Bell - Fits in rather nicely in this run of HOVG 3B.
64)Pie Traynor
65)Ed Williamson - I was missing a little something here.
66)Johnny Evers
67)Elston Howard
68)Joe Wood - If he had one more really good year as a pitcher, he'd be balloted
69)Bill Mazeroski
70)Tony Lazerri - Similar value to Maz. Accrued very differently.
71)Tommy Leach - I had missed him until now - I don't see the great love for him, though.
72)Vic Willis - A reexamination of all pitchers to include fielding ability causes an adjustment for Willis and a jump up the consideration set.
73)Thurmon Munson - see below.
74)Roger Bresnahan - Not like the two above or below, he is among those negatively affected by my new adjustments.
75)Walker Cooper - some days, he reminds me of Quincey Trouppe
76)Johnny Pesky
77)Hippo Vaughn
78)Tom Henke - Not a long career, but the Terminator was one of the best closers in the game at his peak.
79)George Kell - Had him a bit too high earlier.
80)Cesar Cedeno - Found him to be comparable to Amos Otis and Jimmy Wynn in total value. Slots lower than those two in light of the shape of that value.
81)Vada Pinson - The ink really threw me for a twist. He looks like a good all-round CF, not great. But he amassed hefty ink totals for his generation. This may be a safe ranking.
82)Luis Aparicio - The low OPS+ masks his real effectiveness.
83)Tip O'Neill - The next Canadian.
84)Rocky Colavito
85)Chuck Klein - Drops like a rock. Great hitter Not much else. What separates him from Cravath. Not sure at the moment, really. I guess Cravath has those extra credit intangibles.
86)Denny Lyons
87)John McGraw - Hurt alot by my readjustment - no durability. Tsk, tsk.
88)George Van Haltren - see the comment on Wynn. Van Haltren is the big loser on the CF sweepstakes due to his poor fielding by my own accounts.
89)Rabbit Maranville

I don't remember him beginnig thought of like Pucket was though his fall was light years longer

Any kid growing up in the Seventies thought O.J. was at least the same in rep as Kirby, especially if you saw him in The Towering Inferno. Besides, as bad as what Kirby allegedly done, it obviously still wasn't the same as what Simpson did.

If Puckett's and Simpson's HOF vote was this year, Puckett most likely would still have made it. I doubt O.J. would have, though.

1) Dave Winfield - no surprises he does well in a career based system. I have him about dead even with Clemente in career value but Clemente did it in 500 fewer games. Winfield is at the HoM median comparable with Billy Williams.
2) Luis Tiant - Has the career value that Stieb and Walters don't have with comparable PRAA. Has the top seasons that John and Tanana don't have with comparable PRAR. This makes him pretty unique among pitchers. Comparable to Bunning and Marichal.
3) Lou Whitaker - Gets demerits for platooning and park effects but still a very solid player and easily slides to the top of the ballot. I have his value closest to Billy Herman.

4) Buster Clarkson - What does Whitaker have on Clarkson besides a case built on major league playing time without war credit? Very little but that's enough for me to break the tie in favor of Whitaker. I'm convinced that Clarkson is clearly better than contemporaries Bob Elliott and HoM member Willard Brown. 2 NgL All-star seasons in the 40s with a war in between them. 2 league MVP caliber seasons in the Texas League. Never had a fair shot at the majors due mainly to age. Played a lot more SS than 3B, I've pegged his defense at the same level as Jay Bell.
5) Bob Johnson - 12-14 seasons at 25-50% above average is very impressive. Any voter discounting his war years AND denying him PCL credit is doing him wrong.
6) Tommy Bridges - I like him a lot more than Bucky Walters. Deserves a little war credit. Not an innings eater like sinkerballer Walters but a strikeout pitcher who put up more PRAA in fewer innings.
7) Willie Randolph - Very good top of the order hitter, very good defender, longer career than average. It all adds up to a mid-ballot placement.
8) Norm Cash - If Orlando Cepeda had a glove he'd be up here.
9) Graig Nettles - Very good glove, very good bat, long enough career
10) Tony Perez - Very long career, time at 3B helps him quite a bit.
11) Buddy Bell - Brooks Robinson type glove, just enough bat.
12) Ron Cey - I'm starting to wonder if there was a shift that causes 3B to excel at a rate they hadn't previously or if we entered a golden age for 3B. If I adjust 3B from this era down it just bubbles up marginal outfielders instead of marginal 3B. I'm willing to accept that this period just has a glut of marginal 3B candidates. Perhaps the talent shifted from CF to 3B at some point.
13) Rick Reuschel - Pitched a lot of innings, some years at a very high level and most years he was at least average. Hit and fielded well for his position.
14) Reggie Smith - Won't look good in a system that only considers per season value because he wasn't great at in-season durability. Still, he had a long career with a good glove and a very good bat.
15) Rusty Staub - There's a solid 5 year prime in the midst of the long career of good performance in slightly lower playing time.

1. Lou Whitaker (new) Not inner circle, of course, but easily qualified to be a HoMer and easily better than Randolph.2. Dave Winfiled (new) I don't much like his case, but that much career can't be ignored.3. Larry Doyle (1, 1, 3, 5, 3) Big hitter in low scoring times - nearly as good a hitter as the backlog outfielders. Mediocre defense, but occupied the position for a long time. Some other voters' comments have portrayed him as not mediocre, but historically bad, a "statue." If so, why did the defense-obsessed writers vote him a Chalmers award? I tend to doubt that John McGraw would have put up with that bad a defensive liability.4. Dave Stieb (--, 6, 6, 4) RA+ Pythpat 190-131 with a 4-year peak that was an equivalent 81-41. Edges ahead of Bridges and Walters because the 80's were a harder decade to dominate. Ranks well ahead of Morris and Viola (see below).5. George Van Haltren (4, 2, 4, 7, 5) He did accomplish quite a bit in his career. Has now been on my ballot for nearly 90 years. Sam Thompson has what could have been his spot in the HoM.6. Tommy Bridges (5, 3, 7, 8, 6) RA+ PythPat 190-124. Walters had a higher peak, but Bridges was a terrific pitcher.7. Bucky Walters (6, 4, 8, 9, 7) Offense-adjusted RA+ PythPat 197-148. More peak than Bridges, but the one thing RA+ doesn't account for directly is defensive support and he seems to have had plenty of that - so I knocked him down a couple of notches.8. Orlando Cepeda (7, 5, 9, 10, 8) The Baby Bull. Cha-Cha. There are plenty of places to find fault: indifference to defense, selfishness about his role with the Giants, injury history, early decline. But the early decline sticks out because the start was so good. And his NL was a strong league.9. Norm Cash (8, 6, 10, 11, 9) One year does not make a peak (or a prime). But oh, what a year. Actually, he's on my ballot as a career candidate, although missing games in each year whittles away at his career value.10. Willie Randolph (--, 12, 12, 10) This is much higher than I would have placed Fox - but then Randolph was better than Fox. Basically, I like the OBP.11. Lou Brock (10, 9, 13, 13, 11) Low-peak, career-value candidate, severely underrated by OPS+, but of little defensive value.12. Sal Bando (11, 10, 14, 14, 12) A hair ahead of Bob Elliott.13. Bob Elliott (12, 11, 15, 15, 13) Now that Paul called attention to it, the Dixie Walker reference was getting a little dated. Roughly the value of Al Oliver or Brian Downing as a hitter, plus 1300+ games of pretty good 3B.14. Tony Perez (13, 12, 16, 16, 15) A little less a hitter (mostly that's a about prime-shoulder seasons) than Staub, did play a fair amount of 3B.16. Rusty Staub (14, 13, 17, 17, 16) Reggie Smith plus some hang-around time. Not Frank Howard's peak, but some peak anyway.
16. Luis Tiant (15, 14, 18, 18, 17) RA+ equivalent 224-164. A 60's pitcher who re-invented himself as a 70's pitcher. A major participant in the 1968 "year of the pitcher" festivities. But it's the 70's career that has more value.
17. Reggie Smith (16, 15, 19, 19, 18) A very, very good player who always seemed to wind up on winning teams.
18. Ken Singleton (21, 20, 24, 20, 19) A much better candidate than contemporary opinion would have made him. Earl Weaver's kind of hitter. But we can't let our enthusiasm for another unrecognized ballplayer overcome the fact that he's just another "bat," another corner outfielder of limited defensive value. Compared to Reggie Smith, he's got the better peak but less career - and I am more of a career voter.
19. Tommy John (18, 17, 21, 21, 20) RA+ Pythpat record of 281-244 with no big years. Compare to Tiant: the difference of 57-80 is pretty much a wash, and Tiant had some big years.
20. Darrell Porter (19, 18, 22, 22, 21) Better than Munson. Nearly as good a hitter, in context, as Lombardi.
21. Jack Clark (--, 5, 23, 22) I overdid his case in his first year.
22. Graig Nettles (20, 19, 23, 24, 23) Interesting candidate, but not enough of a hitter for me to put him with Bando and Elliott.
23. Ron Cey (22, 21, 25, 25, 24) The best of that Dodger infield, although Lopes was also awfully good. Doesn't match Elliot and Bando as a hitter, so I'll slot him in behind them.
24. Frank Howard (9, 8, 11, 26, 25) Finally came to grips with his lack of defense and comparison to the likes of Singleton and Clark - and he drops in my ratings.
25. Gene Tenace (24, 23, 27, 28, 26) Only half a catcher, but a better hitter than our other half-catchers (Bresnahan, Schang)
26. Dick Redding (25, 24, 28, 29, 27)
27. Luis Aparicio (26, 25, 29, 30, 28) More games at SS than anyone else, 500 SB with a good percentage.
28. Bobby Bonds (27, 26, 30, -, 29)
29. Hugh Duffy (28, 27, --, 30) OK, but I'd rather have Van Haltren.
30. Kirby Puckett (new) Racking my brain for good reasons to put him ahead of Lynn or Cedeno - I suppose he has a consistency and in-season durability advantage.

All of the other top-tenners belong to our long-term backlog. Yes, I know the arguments; no, I'm not accidentally overlooking anyone.

Tom Henke: on a very short list of great relievers. But this list of relievers I'm willing to put in the HoM is even shorter.

Don Mattingly: this is a first baseman we're talking about, and the standards are high. Not as high a peak as Hernandez or Cepeda, and he's certainly not a career candidate.

Lance Parrish: Long career. Not much of an offensive peak. Reminds me of Rick Ferrell. There's a case to be made, but at the moment, I'm not buying it.

Dave Stewart: not as peak-valuable as 4 consecutive 20-win seasons would suggest; not much different in career value from Bob Forsch.

Kirk Gibson: probably talented enough to be a HoMer, but missed too much time and career too short.

Andy Van Slyke: throw in Van Slyke's defensive value and I might place him ahead of Gibson. Many parallels to the career of J.D. Drew, but Van Slyke might have been more consistent and durable (for whatever that's worth.)

I’m submitting my ballot early, as always, but there’s a caveat. I’m still unsure on Moran, and if Chris’ data come back higher, I may yet add Moran to my ballot.

1. Alejandro Oms: I know I’m going against the grain here. I think Oms probably did everything Winfield did over a long career, plus he played a good centerfield for much of it. Oms, in fact, has lots in common with Winfield, including the fact that neither seems to have had a superior peak, that both had a long, wonderful prime, and that both racked up tons of career value. Winfield is a safer, easier choice between them because his career is entirely documented and simple to interpret, but the NgL players have always required some guesswork, and my guess is that they are similar players with the slight advantage of position going to Oms.

2. Dave Winfield: Great career candidate, and one of the most engaging and entertaining baseball personalities of his time. Winfield could do a little of everything and a lot of a lot of things. In fact, there’s an interesting argument that Winfield is what Andre Dawson might have been had Dawson any plate patience worth mentioning. Add it all up and Winfield’s a great rightfielder, if not in the class of Robinson, Aaron or Ruth—or for that matter Kelly, Crawford, and Kaline. Not to be overly heretical, but I’d have Winfield above Roberto Clemente as well as Enos Slaugther, and Dewey, about even with Keeler, Heilmann, Goslin, and Cravath. He doesn’t have the strong peak of some of these guys, but rather a continuing string of strong prime seasons that add up to a ton of value.

3. Wilbur Cooper: Dominant NL portsider of the late 1910s-early 1920s. This guy was in the (retroactive) Cy Young chase every single year for a good long while in the late teens and early 1920s, battling Old Pete, Hippo, and Dolf for several years. I like pitchers who show dominance for a good stretch, and he’s one.

4. Ken Singleton: He’s the best player in the AL of the very late 1970s, and a good long while best RF in the AL. And while he might not have much defensive value, he’s doing a great job of walking and hitting with power, lots of SEC. Plenty of All-Star and MVP type seasons.

5. Larry Doyle: Dominant 2B of the NL of the 1910s, good peak/prime, and an argument for having been the best player in the NL for a brief time. Few on this ballot can make such a claim to league-wide dominance.

6. Tommy Leach: Pick your poison. As a CF, he’s not got enough peak to get on the ballot. But as a 3B, he’s a fabulous career candidate with enough at the top end to be among the top dozen 3Bs. Splitting it down the middle, he’s a 3B/CF hybrid with outstanding seasons at both positions, a nice, long career, and enough peak/prime to emerge as a downballot candidate.

7. Lou Whitaker: I had a whole argument about Doyle v. Whitaker, but then I realized Doyle’s not exactly Whitaker’s competition because of the position switcheroo of the 1930s. Instead, Whitaker’s competition are Randolph (whom he bests in my system) and Leach (who is the leading 3B in my system) Actually, Leach and Whitaker have much in common. Whitaker was his league’s best 2B for about a decade, and has lots of hang-on time thereafter. Leach was his league’s best 3B or CF for similar, but shorter periods. Both guys are serious prime-career candidates, and once you get past position/All-Star seasons, Leach has small things that help him even things up. Leach has just a couple more overall markers in my system, so I have him ahead. I could just as easily use the timeline as a tiebreaker and give it to Whitaker.

8. Lance Parrish: Let me take a minute here to explain, since I think everyone’s going to jump my ship for this. As explained in his thread, Parrish’s two big knocks are his lack of walks and his fielding. But neither ubersystem sees Parrish as having problematic fielding—to the contrary, they LIKE his glove. We have evidence of his defensive goodness which has been largely ignored in the discussions so far: Parrish hung on for a good while as a regular and semi-regular despite a decline in his hitting—he could not have done so had his defense been as weak as has been said. Which leaves the walks. Well, catchers who play D and hit 300+ homers are still pretty rare, even in today’s HR-happy times. I won’t tell you the lack of walks is illusory, but I will say that Parrish built a lot of value despite the lack of walks, and that value is what I’m looking at. Parrish’s case begins and ends with positional dominance and career length. He was the best catcher of the AL for several years. Even after, he remained a productive regular for several seasons and a good backup even after that. He’s almost as high in my rankings at catcher as Whitaker is in my rankings of 2Bs. Not quite but almost. He’s right below Freehand and Torre. However, he’s more impressive than the guys below him at catcher, where Whitaker’s got plenty of guys breathing down his neck. I think both are HOMers, but their relative rankings are not cast in stone, and I’ll continue to monitor how I feel about it.

9. Dave Stieb: Admittedly I’ve been an advocate for Stieb. But I think it’s warranted. He outshone the league during a difficult time to dominate, and he’s the best pitcher in the AL over long, meaningful stretches of time. I wish 1986 were better, but that’s life. You don’t get to pick when your off years happen. Even so, he had plenty left in the tank, and among eligible peak/prime pitchers, he’s a great choice for induction. I have him above Walters based on many of the small things discussed in the Stieb thread, however, I could just as easily have gone the other way on it.

10. Bucky Walters: You know the story---I like pitcher peaks, and he's got one, even when dampened for the war.

11. Leroy Matlock: He’s back. Many years ago now I saw Matlock as the best available pitcher. My consensus scores plummeted…. But in reviewing NgL players, I looked back on his thread, and I don’t really understand why I lost my nerve on him. The MLEs look HOMable, even if you see that 1937 season as a little less than 43 WS. I think we’ve whiffed on him, and that someday when we’ve got more better information, he’ll be one of the “lost” guys that no one talked about who ends up as a HOMer.

12. Hugh Duffy: Lots of All-Star and MVP type seasons, a good run as his league's best position player, plenty of adjusted career value. He'd be a perfectly fine selection, but he’s certainly a borderliner.

13. Gavy Cravath: Nearly as good as Winfield, but that doesn’t necessarily translated into a high ballot placement….

14. Sal Bando: Same old, same old here. You’ve read my thoughts for ten years.

15. Pie Traynor: He’s extremely close to Bando in value.

TRAILERS IN THE CLUBHOUS (DON'T FORGET TO SIGN YOUR SCORECARD!!!)
-Kirby Puckett: Not enough peak to be a peak/prime guy, not enough career to be a prime/career guy, not enough prime to get in on it alone.
-Don Mattingly: An all-time favorite player, but there’s too much Sisler-Lite and not enough prime in that career.
-Dave Stewart: Nice scowl.
-Tom Henke: Great closer, retired too soon for my tastes. But he’s part of the all Male Professional Golfers Surname Team:

-Pete Browning: Just off my ballot, and I was probably wrong about his HOMiness previously.

-Dick Redding: I’m not a believer. Those 1920s numbers aren’t pretty. I’d encourage everyone to look back at them again. It’s not pretty at all, and he needs all of them to make it. I’d rather induct Cannonball Adderley.

-Willie Randolph: Very close to the ballot, but not quite there. As someone whose support of Nellie Fox was herky-jerky, I recognize the reasons why people have him higher or lower.

-Tony Perez: A prime and career that still awaits a great peak.

-Charley Jones: Baseball’s most weirdest career. An uptick seems in the offing to me if the 1875 stuff is true, and there’s more info from Paul Wendt. He’s very close already

-Roger Bresnahan: Tralee’s at the bottom of my current catcher list, no problem to me if he goes in.

1. Dave Winfield (-)--Career length and quality of competition gives him the edge on Browning and Jones, but it’s closer than I would have thought.

2. Pete Browning (3)--If he played in the PCL in the 00s or the Negro Leagues in the 30s, would he be a HOMer by now? Same as with the Negro Leaguers, the league translations inordinately underrate his peak. Besides, it isn’t like the AA wasn’t a major league. A better gladiator than Russell Crowe. (1927)

2. Lou Whitaker, 2B (n/e). I always thought that Sweet Lou was underrated by the public. I never realized I was underrating him as well. He’s even better than I thought: 351 WS, 122.1 WARP, 117 OPS+, 1337 Runs Created and a very good glove.

3. Cannonball Dick Redding, P (3). PHoM- 1975. Great peak years between 1914 and 1919 including an estimated 2.14 ERA in 321 innings for Chicago in 1917 (according to i9). Lost a half a year in each of ’18 and ’19 due to military service. Even so, his career MLEs of 234-174 put him in the neighborhood if not ahead of contemporaries like Coveleski, Faber and Rixey.

4. Alejandro Oms, CF (5). PHoM- 1984. Finally convinced that he’s the best eligible outfielder. Including play in his native Cuba, Oms has a long, outstanding career. He hit for both average and power, plus he was an above-average (and possibly exceptional) defensive center-fielder.

5. Tommy Bridges, P (6). One of the beneficiaries of my big re-evaluation. I love that long prime. Top ten in ERA+ 10 times in 12 seasons (Addie Joss is only other eligible 20th century with more than 7 and he has 8). Top ten in IP 5 straight seasons from 1933 to 1937 for a suitable peak. Would be higher with a bit more career value.

6. Bob Johnson, LF (7). Another beneficiary of my big re-evaluation. We’ve already got plenty of players from his era, but Bob Johnson’s prime is almost as good as Bridges’. Top ten in OPS+ 10 times in 12 seasons. Top ten in RC 9 times. 13 seasons with OPS+ over 125 (Jack Clark is only other eligible outfielder with more than 10 and he has 11). Similar to Bridges, would be higher with a bit more career value.

7. Willie Randolph, 2B (4). PHoM- 2000. Slips back to where he was on my 1999 ballot as his numbers don’t look quite as impressive when compared directly to Whitaker. Still worthy of induction, though.

8. Dave Stieb, P (9). The best starting pitcher of his era. Good long prime for 10 of 11 years from 1980 to 1990 (1986 was a down-year exception) in which he pitched over 200 innings 9 times and had an ERA+ over 130 7 times. No other pitcher of his era combines the bulk (going 1, 2, 1, 3 in IP from ’82 to ‘85) and the quality (going 2, 3, 1, 1 in ERA+ for those same four seasons).

9. Dave Concepcion, SS (10). My new favorite candidate. No other eligible shortstop can match Concepcion for length and quality of prime. Excellent all-around shortstop for 8 out of 9 years from 1974 to 1982 (1980 was a down-year exception), 8 ½ if counting his 89 game season in 1973.

10. Lou Brock, LF (8). PHoM- 1985. I had honestly expected that Brock would fall further in my re-evaluation but he ended up doing okay. 1622 career RC are best of any eligible player. Very consistent for 13 years from 1964 to 1976 with OPS+ always between 106 and 128 and RC/27 over 5.00 for all 13 seasons. Among the worst defensive outfielders but that doesn’t hurt him as much as it might as there are few eligible corner outfielder candidates with outstanding gloves.

11. Don Newcombe, P (12). PHoM- 1987. Great years in ’50-’51 and ’55-’56 interrupted by military service in the Korean War. Missing a rise to his career due to integration and a tail due to his own personal issues (and no, he doesn’t get credit for the latter). With proper credit, he’s well over 200 wins for his career and though he isn’t in the same class as contemporaries like Whitey Ford and Billy Pierce, he’s close enough to be worthy of induction.

12. Hugh Duffy, CF (11). PHoM- 1995. An excellent center-fielder who could have won Gold Gloves in ’93 and ’95, he was moved to left not because of poor play but because his team acquired Billy Hamilton. Also, an excellent offensive player for 8 seasons from 1890 to 1897. That’s not quite as valuable as what Concepcion did at SS, but it’s close.

13. Roger Bresnahan, C (13). The best catcher on the ballot. Offensively comparable to Lombardi (OPS+ 126 for Bresnahan to 125 for Lombardi) but more impressive for his dead-ball context. Also, better defensively at C with the versatility to play CF.

14. Orlando Cepeda, 1B (14). PHoM- 1996. The best available 1B. Has the peak than many of the career candidates are missing (including the recently elected Beckley) with OPS+ of 165, 164, 157 and 148. Has the career than many of the peak candidates are missing with 1375 Runs Created. I don’t think that the difference between Cash and Cepeda is all that great but I come down on the side of the Bull.

15. Dick Lundy, SS (n/a). Top 20 for a long time, finally cracks the top 15. Hall of Fame research shows that he walked more than initially credited. Initially compared to now-inducted Sewell and to players at other positions such as Biz Mackey and Cool Papa Bell. Similar defense to Bancroft. Similar length of prime to Concepcion from 1919-24 and ’26-28. Best player on pennant winning teams for two different franchises

Top Ten Returnees:
Pete Browning: voted for him once or twice before but I strongly prefer the 1890s center-fielders Duffy who is on my ballot and Van Haltren who is not
Charley Jones: better than I first realized, about 40th
Tony Perez: should be in the Hall of Merit eventually, just not ahead of the '60s duo of Cepeda and Cash

Other New Eligibles:
Kirby Puckett: a little bit better than Murphy, currently 5th among center-fielders
Don Mattingly: fifth among first basemen but below my personal in/out line as prime was too short for his position
Lance Parrish: the closest to my ballot of this set of three; could be on before we're done

I’m a peak voter, though an amazing prime or really strong career will overwhelm my peak preferences in my (revamped) system. I rely heavily on WS for hitters, with OPS+ and a little WARP thrown in as well. For starting pitchers, I prefer PRAA, with some ERA+ adjustments and a little WS (which I don’t love for pitchers) for good measure. For relievers, I’ve adopted a mix of career total PRAA and year-by-year peak PRAA, with an emphasis on the latter, which seems to produce the most sensible results I can come up with.

Just a few small tweaks this time, mostly involving a few individual players I felt I was still underestimating, Fingers and Rizzuto foremost among them.

pHOM: Winfield, Fingers, Minoso

2001 ballot:

1. Dizzy Dean (pHOM 1967). Sure, it’s a really short peak (which is why he’s not even higher), but he was inarguably dominant during it. It’s just long enough for me.

2. Ed Williamson (pHOM 1931). A lost cause, but still the best of the backlog 3Bs, for my taste. As Sunny always points out, great peak on both offense and defense. He’s the one old-timer on my ballot who never seems to give ground, regardless of how I tweak my system.

3. Dave Winfield (pHOM 2001). A childhood hero I can vote for, at last! He’s a perfect example of someone who does better in my revamped system, since he didn’t have too many off-the-charts years—just an awful lot of far-above-average years. (A prime candidate, I guess you’d call him.) In placing him here, I’m assuming that something fishy is going on in his poor defensive rating from Win Shares—otherwise he’d be just below Singleton.

4. Elston Howard (pHOM 1976). The various extenuating circumstances of his career can’t hide the great (if short) peak.

5. Vic Willis (pHOM 1961). Not the most dominant pitcher of his era, perhaps, but he was in the mix with some of the all-time greats. Excellent peak.

6. Pete Browning (pHOM 1979). An offensive force, if not as much of one as the insane AA numbers make it appear. His non-AA years prove that he wasn’t just a soft-league fluke.

7. Gavvy Cravath (pHOM 1985). Every time I reevaluated outfielders, he would do a little better. Now I can’t believe he hasn’t been here all along. With minor-league credit, he’s got the peak I look for.

8. Luis Tiant (pHOM 1991). No, he wasn't Carlton/Niekro/Perry/Jenkins—too inconsistent, not good enough long enough—but he packed enough brilliance into several years to get my vote.

9. Charley Jones (pHOM 1976). As with Browning, his numbers are covered in the AA mist, but I’m convinced he played at a high enough level long enough for induction—at his best, he was pretty clearly a force.

10. Al Rosen (pHOM 1968). Another very short peak, but five great years, especially at this position, are enough for me.

11. Ken Singleton (pHOM 1997). One of the “I had no idea he was this good at the time” gang—I think he was the player most felt Rice was back then.

12. Hugh Duffy (pHOM 1930). I still like his peak—just not as much as I used to when I was almost giving him elect-me spots.

13. John McGraw (pHOM 1996). Another tiny peak, but it seems good enough to outstrip the recent 3B glut to me (and at this position, it’s not like the years outside the peak are useless).

14. Larry Doyle (pHOM 1995). Yes, it’s a pretty short peak, and the weakness of era is also noted—those are the two things that have kept him off my ballot this long. And yes, I know he’s more like a modern 3B than a 2B. But his five-year peak compares favorably with those guys’, too.

[14a. Rollie Fingers (pHOM 2001). I swear, I decided to put him here this time around before I knew he’d been elected. The recent added information from cblau finally convinced me that despite the lack of the extreme PRAA peak I usually want from relievers, he was really remarkable for a really extended period, in a way few relievers ever have been. That’s enough to push him over the top for me.]

15. Dick Redding (pHOM 1975). Climbs back to my ballot after many years off. He doesn’t appear to have had a slam-dunk kind of peak, but he wasn’t far off that pace.

•Randolph. Much as I’d love to cast a vote for another of my childhood heroes, I just don’t see it. The argument for him seems to revolve around his quality of play compared to that of other 2Bs in his era, and as with Concepcion, that’s just not terribly convincing to me. Otherwise, it takes a lot of extra fielding credit (which I do give, having been convinced that WS often undervalues fielding significantly) to get him up around Marvin Williams, which leaves him just outside my top 50.

•Stieb. I agree with the growing consensus that he’s a lot like Walters. But I’m not as high on Walters as I once was. Stieb is right on the borderline, though, now, at #23.

•Bresnahan. He’s been in my pHOM for some time now—just bumped down by a lot of other worthy players. Not too far off-ballot, at #22.

•Perez. I’m not a fan—the fact that many of his best offensive years were also the 3B years helps, but otherwise he doesn’t have nearly the peak or even prime I’m looking for from someone who was mainly a 1B. He’s somewhere in the 60-70 range.

•Whitaker. Certainly vastly underrated—I agree it’s nuts he didn’t even get enough HOF votes to stay on the ballot. And yes, he was the best AL second-bagger for a while there, but I don’t love that argument. To me, he’s another of the good-at-everything-for-a-while candidates, which is enough to get him to the borderline of my pHOM, but not to my ballot. (I may be being a tad conservative with him on his first time out, I admit.) Debuts at #27.

•Puckett. Kind of Dale Murphy-plus. I suspect with a full career, he’d have enough prime/career to overcome his lack of peak. But I really don’t see how he can get in unless you play a what-if game, and if I’m not doing that for Joss or Mattingly, I’m not doing it for Puckett. The defense and postseason heroics elevate him past Murphy, but not that far. He starts at #30.

•Mattingly. As was (and is) the case with my favorite player of the ‘70s, Graig Nettles, I just can’t quite see my way to voting for my favorite player of the ‘80s. George Sisler–lite is about right, and that’s not enough peak to overcome the lack of prime/career. The defense helps, as it did with Keith Hernandez, but only enough to get him into my top 50; he debuts at #46.

•Parrish. Not remotely enough peak or prime. He wasn't as good as Munson, and I don’t love Munson.

•Henke. He’s among the top ten relievers we’ve seen so far. Henke was very good for a remarkably long time for a relief pitcher without having any of those insane John Hiller seasons; I slot him between Hiller and Radatz all-time, around eighth for RPs thus far. But that’s not good enough to make my top 50.

No one else among new eligibles is close to my top 50. I did enjoy that anaconda story from Dave Stewart, though.

I value career over peak, but can be entranced by a great prime. I look at traditional statistics, ERA+, OPS+, Win Shares and Ink. Equally importantly, I read everything on this board and incorporate all that work into my analysis, whether it is RSI, MLEs, PenAdds, simple comparisons of candidates or anything else.

I am really lost after my top 12. I cannot make a distinction between the value of the players anymore at that level.

Puckett (29) and Parrish (20 or 21) make my top 50. Mattingly and Henke don’t. Parrish is superior or equal to Bresnahan in my view, which makes me reconsider Bresnahan (20 or 21).

1. Winfield – easily qualified.

2. Lou Brock – I think the post season value and the tremendous speed puts him ahead of the similar long-career peakless Beckley. OCF sums up his case in post 126 of the Brock thread. Number of unelected Hall of Fame or Hall of Merit eligible players with more hits than Brock: Zero. Number of people with more MLB hits than Brock: 21.

3. Mickey Welch – 300 wins, lots of grey ink. RSI data shows those wins are real. Compares fairly well to Keefe. I like his dominating record against HoMers. With Beckley elected, he is my last real Teddy Bear.

4. Burleigh Grimes – as a career voter, I have difficulty seeing the vast difference others see between Rixey and Faber (both now elected) and Grimes.

5. Tony Perez – this might be a bit high, but I am comfortable with it. 34th all-time in total bases, no black ink – the weight of his career totals push him above what otherwise looks like a definitional bubble candidate’s resume.

6. Whitaker – I found him hard to place, so this is conservative. Better than Fox, also better than Randolph, who is 16 spots back.

7. Dick Redding – probably the 6th best blackball pitcher of all-time (behind, at least, Williams and Paige and likely behind the Fosters and Brown), and that is good enough for me.

8. Addie Joss – I don’t like short careers much, but I cannot ignore the best WHIP of all-time, the second best all-time ERA, the 12th best ERA+ and the nice winning percentage. He is barely better than (this is an unordered list) Stieb, Kaat, Hunter, Harder, Warneke, Smith, Bridges, Gomez, Hoyt, Dean, Luque, Pennock, Trucks, Matthews, Quinn, McCormick, Cicotte, Willis, Walters, Bender, Mays, Cooper, Shocker, Mullane (highest WS of any non-candidate by far), Byrd and Mullin.

9. Pete Browning – Joe Jackson’s most similar player, and they are pretty close – I have him as about 4/5ths of Jackson, who was 2nd on my ballot when elected. Pete Browning benefits from a decision I made in 1986. I’m a career voter, but I have decided that I’d rather honour a great peak than the 210th best career candidate.

10. Tommy John – not too far from Grimes, a step above Kaat. No credit for the surgery, but medical pioneers (even the guinea pigs) get my respect.

11. Jim Rice – I like the 77-79 peak. I like the runs created in his ten+ year prime and I like his overall totals. I do adjust raw totals significantly, but I think people are holding Fenway too much against him. From 1975 to 1986, Rice led the American League in total games played, at-bats, runs scored, hits, homers, RBIs, slugging percentage, total bases, extra-base hits, go-ahead RBIs, multi-hit games, and outfield assists.

12. Dave Parker – I think he is very similar to Rice (Jim), but I like Rice’s (Jim) peak better. Their career counting stats impress me.

13. Sam Rice -- 2987 hits speaks to me, but not even the best starch on the ballot.

14. Orlando Cepeda – He is a very difficult choice for me because he isn’t significantly better than Roush, Howard, Colavito and Cash, but the slight difference means about 25 spaces on this ballot.

15. Luis Tiant – I don’t have a problem with 11 pitchers from the 70s making our Hall. Talent isn’t evenly distributed and I have no problem with acknowledging value attached to favourable conditions. See Welch, Mickey, for the other side of the same coin.

Randolph -- at 22, he is close
Stieb -- my all time favourite player. He is not a HoMie. Not enough career, not enough actual success. He clearly had HoM talent and almost had 6 or 7 no-hitters.
Jones -- not really in my consideration set (I'm not voting for Bug Holliday either. But seriously, even with credit for 81/82, which I don't give, his career is not long enough or special enough for me).
Bresnahan -- at 20, he is close

2001 Ballot
1. Charley Jones – Truly great hitter who missed 2 years in his prime. Elected PHOM in 1921.
2. Dave Winfield - Elected PHOM in 2001.
3. Pete Browning – Great hitter. Elected PHOM in 1925
4. Vic Willis – Very good pitcher. I like him better than Waddell. Elected PHOM in 1945.
5. Dick Redding –Elected PHOM in 1968
6. Hugh Duffy – Better than Van Haltren and Ryan, Elected PHOM in 1970
7. Burleigh Grimes – Higher peak than Rixey. Elected PHOM in 1961
8. Dave Stieb - Jumps up in reevaluation this year. Slightly better than Walters. Elected PHOM in 2000.
9. Bucky Walters Very high peak. Elected PHOM in 1972
10. Alejandro Oms – Jumps up some on this ballot. Elected PHOM in 1978.
11. Lou Whitaker - Elected PHOM in 2001.
12. Ed Williamson – I’ll take him over Boyer. Elected PHOM in 1958
13. Ken Singleton – Jumps onto ballot after I adjust for the DH. Elected PHOM in 1997.
14. Dizzy Dean – Short career, but high peak. Koufax lite. Elected PHOM in 1973.
15. Elston Howard – Underrated. Elected PHOM in 1985

Required DisclosureRoger Bresnahan - Just misses my ballot.Willie Randolph - very good player and great Yankee. Not as good as Gordon as a Yankee 2nd baseman. Gordon's not in my PHOM either.Tony Perez - good career and thirdbase work helps. Moved up recently but not enough to make my ballot.

New EligblesLance Parrish - Highest ranked among new eligibles not in my ballot. Fine catcher and good offense, but not as good as Howard or Munson.Kirby Puckett - Fun player to watch. Very close to Murphy.Don Mattingly - My all-time favorite player. Best first baseman eligible based on my system. Not quite Puckett.Tom Henke - He and Righetti are very close to each other in my system.Dave Righetti - My 2nd all-time favorite player. Best reliever for a brief period of time. I also remeber when he threw a ball over the outfield fence. Not sure which year it was.

Review of my methodology: I use two systems, in one I use OPS+, with adjustments for stolen bases and shape of OPS, compared to a positional baseline. For pitchers, this is RA+, with adjustments for high IP seasons and relief pitching. In the other, I simply use the uberstats, mostly WARP but I'm integrating Win Shares into the analysis. For both systems, I use a JAWS-like formula to weigh peak and career.

1-LOU WHITAKER: The top two newbies are close, but I choose him. His platoon split hurts him by taking away plate apperances from him, no further. Clearly better than Randolph, clearly worse than Grich.

2-DAVE WINFIELD: I wonder if, in the future, he will become somewhat of an "anonymous Hall of Famer".

3-GAVVY CRAVATH: Clearly better than the borderline, Clarke and Flick seem to be good value comparables (maybe Winfield as well). With MLE credit, his peak is on the Kiner/Keller class, with the career that those two lack. So what if he took special advantage of his home park? He did it better than most, and his teams got value out of that.

4-BUS CLARKSON: New MLEs incorporated. Glad to see the debate on him re-sparked, as we may be missing a gem here. In any case, he has well over 300 MLEed Win Shares, and an OPS+ around 120 from a SS/3B. The better part of his career, including his SS peak, took place before the Negro League scene got outta whack (although he was still well traveled). He was one of the reasons I decided to establish my new offense system, and under it he truly shines. I am discounting his 1940 a bit.

5-LUIS TIANT: The 114 ERA+ over a little less than 3500 innings is unimpressive, specially considering his contemporaries, but he really shined with unearned runs (roughly 8.5% of total runs allowed, compared to about 11.5% for his era).

6-WILLIE RANDOLPH: If only he had been eligible a year earlier... Much, much better than Fox. OPS+ actually over 100, and he was a positive basestealer as well. Not much in the way of peak, but a really strong prime.

7-CHARLEY JONES: Similar to Cravath, but he had a shorter career. A better defender, though.

8-ROGER BRESNAHAN: His case has a good bit of context, as it depends on how you account for the brutal conditions for catchers of his time. I like the OBP-heavy production. Should be the favorite candidate of "gap-fillers", along with Clarkson.

9-ALEJANDRO OMS: While the hitting value isn't as much as I once thought, there's too many Win Shares here to ignore. They give him a long career, with a considerable peak as well.

10-TONY LAZZERI: My old teddy bear (although, given my relatively short time voting, does it qualify him as "old"?). Where's the support for a 120 OPS+ second baseman? Was the defense really that bad (and why it doesn't show up on the uberstats, which put him clearly north of Larry Doyle territory)? Is my estimation of the baseline for 1930s second basemen that far off?

11-DAVID CONCEPCIÓN: Averagish-bat, All-Time defense, and a really low baseline to compare him against. Clearly, my favorite among all the middle infielders with a similar profile. I believe there is a "real" reason why shortstops of his time were so bad with the bat, giving him real value.

12-VIC WILLIS: Almost 4000 innings at a 118 ERA+ put him pretty close to the average Hall of Fame starter (probably the average Hall of Meriter is a bit better). Unearned runs are about average for his era, so they don't change his standing too much.

13-BEN TAYLOR: Comparable to Will Clark, but with a longer career and, because of the defensive demands of the position at his time, a lower baseline for comparision.

14-LEVI MEYERLE: Tremendous hitter for an old-time 3B, among those in his thread only McGraw is in his class (and he has other issues). He might have given back a bunch of it with the glove, but as my vote for Lazzeri indicates, I like bats in glove positions.

15-MIKE TIERNAN: Not much uber-stat love, but I dig the OPS+ peak. These two plus Lazzeri should keep my consensus score from getting too high ;-)

(2) Bridges (3rd)--Like Cash, Schang, Ted Lyons, Roush, etc., he's underrated by our tendency to focus on seasonal numbers (so why so much love for Whitaker?). Put up lots of quality and sufficient quantity. I have him with 8 truly excellent seasons--no pitcher outside the HoM has more. I never thought he'd get this high on the ballot, but I see no reason to jump him just b/c/ he's now in an elect-me spot.

(3) Oms (4th)--The contemporaries thought he was an All-Time great and the numbers (as thin as they are) back them up. Moved way up as others slide down the ballot. His case has no holes.

(4) Cash (5th)--Similar in career length, offensive value, and defensive value to Wynn but a smidge higher on all three according to WARP and more consistent to boot. Dan's study costs him a few points based on the ease of dominance in the 1960s AL, but others droped too. A lot like Hernandez, only in a substantially weaker league.

(5) Reggie Smith (6th)--Very similar on all dimensions to Cash and Wynn; similar offensively to Roush and Johnson. A bit more consistent than Wynn. More career value than Dale Murphy in a similar opportunity context.

(6) Leach (7th)--If you subtract Brooks Robinson's final useless seasons and project Leach's years out to 162 games, Robinson and Leach have almost identical EQA's and defensive rates in a very similar number of games. The only difference is that half of Leach's games were in CF rather than 3B. Hard to imagine that keeping him out of the HoM. A lot like Darrell Evans, only with contemporary reports that match his stellar defensive numbers.

(7) Lou Whitaker (new)--A tough case--some of the measures I use have him as the top eligible candidates; others have him around 40. Has lots of career value at a solid rate but no truly outstanding seasons. Hard to think of him as an all-time great given the fact that his career overlapped Morgan, Grich, Carew, Sandberg, Biggio, and Alomar, all of whom rank higher, plus Randolph who is about to get elected. For now, this ranking is the best I can do, but might move up or down substantially if not elected.

(8) Dave Stieb (8th)--Best pitcher in the game briefly; lots of quality in a relatively few number of innings. As you can tell by my rankings of Bridges and Shocker, I like this profile better than most.

(9) Urban Shocker (9th)--Joe makes his case well. He didn't pitch a ton of innings or a ton of years but--when you combine durability and quality and adjust for defense--he was one of the best handful of pitchers in the game for a decade. A lot like Tommy Bridges or Dave Stieb.

(10) Bob Johnson (10th)--Doesn't jump out at you, but no major knocks on his resume--highest OWP of any long-career OF still on the board, over 300 WS with proper minor leaue credit even playing for bad teams, great consistency, excellent fielder for his position. Since his era and position are already well-represented and he doesn't have a great peak, he losses the most with Dan's numbers, but I still find him worthy.

(11) Elliot (1th)--My tools aren't good enough to distinguish between him and Boyer. Nettles, Bell, Bando, and Cey are also similar, but the glut of 3B in the 1970's suggests that something was different then than when Elliot (and perhaps Boyer) were playing.

(12) Ben Taylor (13th)--I missed the boat on him. I had him comped to Konetchy and, therefore, outside the top 50. But (1) I had Konetchy too low and (2) his offense was one rung better than Ed's. As a result, he is much closer to Hernandez or Cash. Might deserve to rank higher.

(13) Cravath (14th)--I give full minor league credit and see him as the best hitter not in HoM. The knock is that the other candidates for that title (folks like Tiernan, Charley Jones, Browning, Fournier, and Frank Howard) are much further down ballot.

(14) Dale Murphy (15th)--His case rests on six seasons. We have elected a bunch of guys who reached a similar plateau for seven years (e.g., Wynn) and rejected a number who were there for only four or five (e.g., Parker). Six seasons is a very close call.

(15) Frank Chance (not ranked/17th)--Could just as easily be Duffy, Bancroft, or a handful of others. In the end, I just think he was a more important player in the games he played than anyone below him on the ballot.

When you adjust Browning for league quality, you get a guy with a mid 140's OPS+ and roughly 9-plus years of playing time with limited defensive value. I have him somewhere between 45 and 60th.

Dick Redding is in the category of Negro Leaguers whose numbers don't back up their reputations. He doesn't crack my top 60.

Randolph moves up this week based on comparisons to Whitaker--he's now in the late 20's, just a little more offense would have gotten him onto my ballot.

I have nothing wrong to say about Charley Jones, Roger Bresnahan, or Tony Perez. They are all between 18 and 25 on my ballot. I just like others better.

Without adjustments for the strikes, the DH, and league quality, Puckett doesn't make my top 60. With the adjustments I have him somewhere around 35th, right around Wally Berger.

Don Mattingly is--shockingly to this lifelong Yankees fan--only about 55th. He had too few good seasons and there are too many good 1B. But on pure peak value--with proper DH and league quality adjustments--he was a true stud.

The other thing is Garvey wasn't universally liked even in the Seventies before his scandals,

understated

I do think Mattingly should have received a Ring Ding in '94, IMO.

? Steinbrenner should have purchased Eastern Division rings for the whole team?
That the strike cost the Yankees a championship is a myth of the 212 area code. The Yankees led in run difference (+136) and led the AL in w-l but it was a short season; their 1993 and 1995 achievements suggest that Chicago and Cleveland were for real; Chicago (+135) and Montreal (+131) put up better run ratios; Montreal led the majors in w-l. On 2/3-season performance there were four strong teams in each league. In the AL Baltimore was behind in the standings and unsupported by 1993 and 1995 showing. Most likely, the Yankees would have faced both Chi and Cle in the playoffs while the winner of their race faced a very weak Western winner. Rivera and Jeter were no where to be seen.

That the strike cost the Yankees a championship is a myth of the 212 area code.

Hey, don't forget 718! :)

I remember thinking at the time of the cancelled postseason that the Yanks--who at that time, remember, had missed the postseason every year since 1981--had lost their big chance. (I was very pleased to be proven wrong about that in the following years.)

Anyway, that may be the origin of the mythology: It was by no means an assured, or even likely, championship season, but it was the first time the team had seemed to even have a shot at one in 13 years, and Yankee fans at the time really seized on that.

We probably should have let it go after 1996, though. Or at least by 2000.

I had last year's electees Ryan-Gossage-Fingers at 1-2-3 on my ballot. An unusually high number of my old-time favorites have been elected, so modern candidates will do fairly well on my ballot in some years.

The annual fine print: Overall, I think there is too much emphasis on WARP3 and WS, which are intriguing tools but which are not yet sufficiently mature.
So my preference for ERA+ and OPS+ helps, I think, as a reality check. Increasingly, I've had to adjust for PAs/IP per season, not really an issue in earlier years when nearly all star players played almost every day or pitched a ton of innings.
I tend to be mostly prime-oriented with hitters, prime and career with pitchers. But a huge peak sometimes catches my eye, and a remarkably long hitting career also works for me.

1. DAVE WINFIELD - Excellent player from 1978-84. But. His prime (best 7 years) looks a lot like Jimmy Wynn's, with a long tail trailing behind him instead of a stump. I also like some of Beckley 120s OPS+s as an early 1B more than Winfield 115-125s as a modern OF, but Winfield's prime is better. Still, never dreamed those would be two comparisons I'd be making, even if Winfield wins them. Was he Enos Slaughter? No, a bit better than that even with war credit. Wait, I found the guy! He's Billy Williams - a boring HOMer.
2. LOU WHITAKER - Was bidding to be No. 1, but the "D" gave out a little too soon and he Norm Cash-ed out down the stretch. Still, he was nearly Doyle/Lazzeri as a hitter and a very good fielder for half his career. That's the difference between No. 2 and off-ballot.
3. DAVE STIEB - Who knew that Ryan was better than Stieb not by peak or by prime - so that he needed 'career' to win the day? Ryan has more of the durable seasons, and a half-dozen 100-110 ERA+s of an edge on Stieb. Not as massive a gap here as others may perceive. I have Stieb's best 6-7 years right at the Bunning-Pierce level, which is HOM-endorsed both by me and by the electorate. See Stieb's thread for my comments on why he is better than Bridges.

4. PETE BROWNING - Stubbornly holding on. Look at the 1890 PL season. Browning, at age 29, leads the league in adj OPS+ by 13 pts over 32-yr-old HOMer Connor, followed by a 22-yr-old Beckley and HOMers Ewing, Brouthers, Gore, O'Rourke at 6-7-8-9. Ewing is 30, Brouthers is 32, Gore is 33, O'Rourke is 39. Browning by all accounts is 'an old 29' due to his health and alcohol problems. Yet in his chance to play in a HOMer-laden league, he dominates. Yet I am supposed to assume that as a younger player he wouldn't have been able to post big numbers in the NL rather than the AA? Seven OPS+s above 163. 10 seasons as a regular, a good number for the era. This lousy fielder played some 16 pct of his career in the infield. Given the era, how much did he really hurt his team in the field? Not as much as some think; it was a different game then.
5. KIRBY PUCKETT - This was a close call. Good prime for a CF, but not amazing. If I wasn't sold on him being an excellent defensive CF in his first 6-8 years, he'd drop quite a bit. It's that tight. I'll pass on the intangibles, but he holds his own against Bonds offensively and has just enough at the finish line to pass DaMurphy on long prime.
6. BOB JOHNSON - I really like this sort of consistency over an endless span, though I'd hgardly say he's a 'must-elect.' Sort of the Joe Gordon of OFs in career shape, or a slightly longer and flatter version of Kiner. I am concerned by 1944 being his highest OPS+; seems like he took advantage of the weak competition, so I discount that a bit. But has more than a decade's worth of excellent hitting, for a prime that I like better than Van Haltren's or almost any other holdover's.
7. CANNONBALL DICK REDDING - A longtime favorite who has climbed his way back onto my ballot in recent years. I liked him as an all-around candidate, but the HOF research suggests he's more of a peak guy. Those types don't always fare well with me, but with the weakening ballot, to be fair I think he belongs here.
8. BOB ELLIOTT - Bob helps me from being TOO far ahead of the consensus pack, lol. If you haven't examined him in a while - or ever - get to it!! Six seasons of at least 134 OPS+, ALL of them as a 3B. Wish he'd played all 3B and not much OF, but c'est le vie - Sewell seemed to get treated as a full SS by some. Beats out HOMer Boyer (see Boyer thread for details) and compares remarkably well with HOMer Santo as a hitter (see Santo thread for more details). Better than HOMer Hack as well, and better than HOMer DaEvans (see DaEvans thread).
9. ROGER BRESNAHAN - Back on the ballot two years ago after a long drought. Was discarded long ago when I liked many careers better; a fresh look against this pack is enlightening. C and CF combo is fascinating; seems like he was an outstanding all-around player. Just wish he had one more big year, but I can say that about most of the ballot.
10. WILLIE RANDOLPH - I like Willie a little more than Nellie Fox. Remarkably had NINE seasons with a 100 to 107 OPS+, which combined with slick 2B fielding is quite a valuable player. Also cleared 120 OPS+ three times, which is outstanding with this fielding/position. Not sure he's a HOMer, but will likely find a home on this ballot annually.
11. DAVE BANCROFT - Not sure if I ever voted for him before 2 years ago. But look at the prime: fantastic fielder at SS, with OPS+s of 120-19-19-09-09-09-04. Won a fresh 3-way evaluation vs Fox and Concepcion a year ago. Similar to Randolph, but an SS, so maybe Bancroft gets the nod next time.
12. ORLANDO CEPEDA - Suddenly popped up on my ballot 4 years ago with the reevaluation. Had been losing out to Perez with positional consideration, but closer look shows a sterling top-4 and top-10 offensive line. DH opportunity added nothing to his case.
13. REGGIE SMITH - Climbs back on the ballot after winning a reeval last year vs. Jack Clark. Played a lot of CF, and quietly was one of the better OFs of his era. If he's closer to Puckett defensively than I think, then I have to reevaluate. But I don't think so.
14. VIC WILLIS - Won a recent SP bakeoff with Grimes and Walters, with slightly more career than Walters and better peak than Grimes. But boy it's close!
15. GRAIG NETTLES - 2nd time on my ballot, could move up. Very good fielder with nine seasons of 100 to 115 OPS+ as a regular, and outstanding from 1976-78.

JUST MISSED
JACK CLARK - Slips a bit on reconsideration of his durability problems.
FRANK HOWARD - I had forgotten how spectacular his peak was, and his career tally - 142 OPS+ in nearly 8000 PA. Yes, he suffers due to defense - he could make a case for ranking No. 1 if he could field! Best-3 seasons - 177-70-70 in 1968-70, with almost 2100 PA total - make these other guys look like banjo hitters.
BURLEIGH GRIMES - Compare to Ruffing, Rixey, Wynn and other such HOM pitchers - ok, Sutton, too. I dismissed him as short of Rixey and Ruffing, and he was. But he's just one 130 ERA+ year short of climbing a little higher on this ballot. Better peak than Tommy John, and a lot more durable relative to his era.
DAVE CONCEPCION - Peak is as good or better than Fox's; not quite as consistent, but a slick fielder and a very useful offensive weapon many times. Not fully buying the "other teams were stupid enough to play ciphers at the position" argument; that helped the Reds win pennants, but Concepcion can't get full credit for that stupidity. Similar case to Bancroft, whose prime I preferred this year to Concepcion's length.
LUIS TIANT - Looks like he has the peak at first glance, but notice that the IP just aren't quite there. Plenty good when he did pitch, but with that lack of innings you have to be even more dominant. Maybe he winds up as the era's last P electee, but probably not.
RON CEY - In the past I have had him over Nettles and Bell and nearly on the ballot, but that's because I may like his fielding better than most. Closest of the trio to Bando in hitting. Talk me into voting for him.

AMONG THE TOP 10 RETURNEES, BUT I'M NOT VOTING FOR THEM
TONY PEREZ - Mildly tempted for the 5 years at 3B, but wasn't that good at it. Could sneak back in at some point.
BUCKY WALTERS - Two best seasons were not war-related, so that helps me buy into the idea that he'd have had two more really good ones regardless. Really about a 130-140 ERA+ season or two short of my usual standard, but the pool is getting pretty thin. Seems to be grabbing away the "last pitcher" slot from MWelch on occasion. No full penalty for the great defense, but it's an issue.
HUGH DUFFY - Perhaps Win Shares' most embarrassing error. The Roger Maris of the turn of the century - wait, Roger had TWO great seasons and was a good fielder, too.
CHARLEY JONES - Some sympathy for the contract issues, but it's just not the same as going to war or being the 'wrong' skin color. Therefore, I see his career as too short.

NEW
DON MATTINGLY - Nice 3-5 year peak, but carer pales against Cepeda or even Jack Clark. Coulda been a contender, but just didn't last long enough. Underrated fielder.

Thanks, Howie, we needed that. But it's still only 18 ballots, and we're still in the "mid-week" doldrums. With Juan V. adding in two names we haven't seen on ballots in a long time, there are indications that we could tie or break the record for most different candidates voted for.

Since some people asked us to include what we consider . . . I try to look at it all. I'm a career voter mostly - not because I have any bias towards it, but just because the numbers (and every study I've ever seen) tell me that peaks are overrated and 5+5 is only about 10-15% less valuable than 10+0.

I give full war credit, and I think it's a major mistake not to when comparing players across eras. My biggest regret on this project is that we didn't require all voters to give war credit like we did with Negro League credit. I see no difference, both were a circumstance of the player's birthday that was beyond his control. I also follow similar philosophy on strikes. I think it's a cop out to say we don't know so it's a zero. If a guy was a 25 WS a year player before and after the war, a zero is a much bigger mistake than giving him three 25s. As far as injury you just credit a guy based on his playing time before and after the war. There's no reason to assume he would have been any more (or less) injury prone during those years.

I'll give minor league credit for players trapped - once they've had a 'here I am, let me play!' season.

Of late I've been much more hands on in rating the pitchers than the position players. I'm very confident in my pitcher rankings. My position player rankings I'm less confident in, but there are only so many hours in the day, and because of that you'll see more position players moving around from week to week than pitchers.

1. Lou Whitaker 2B (n/e) - Wow. I always knew he was a star, but I didn't realize he was this good. I've got him just behind Jackie Robinson (with 4 seasons worth of extra credit) and Frankie Frisch (who needs a schedule adjustment to push ahead, they are that close). I wouldn't have thought he was quite [that] good until I looked.

3. Rick Reuschel SP (3) - This ranking surprises me a great deal. It's one thing to 'discover' an Ezra Sutton (I mean as a group, not that I discovered him first or anything) who played 130 years ago. But Rick Reuschel was there, right before my very eyes. He pitched in the World Series for my favorite team when I was turning 9 years old. And I never had a clue he was this good.

He isn't peakless either. His 1977 was every bit as valuable as Bunning's 1966. Bunning definitely has him beat in years 2-5, but Reuschel makes it up with more quality in the back end. I get them essentially equal, Reuschel was a little better inning for inning, Bunning had a higher peak, but in the end they even out. I have Reuschel with a 115 DRA+ over 3745 tIP, Bunning was 113 over 3739 tIP. This is where I would have ranked Bunning, who sailed into the Hall of Merit, I have no issue putting Reuschel here.

Even when I take my numbers, but filter them through a Bill James-type NHBA scoring system (that heavily focuses on peak), Reuschel still comes out as the #46 starter eligible, in a group with guys like Jim Palmer, Noodles Hahn, Eddie Rommel, Tex Hughson, Clark Griffith and Whitey Ford. Hahn, Rommel and Hughson all had very nice peaks.

Using a JAWS scoring system, he comes out as the #35 starter, in a group with Wes Ferrell, Jack Quinn, Palmer, Stan Coveleski, Red Faber and Urban Shocker.

I am saying that Reuschel was every bit as good as the Jims, Palmer and Bunning. The only difference between Palmer and Reuschel is park and defense. Reuschel's 1977 was better than any season Palmer had. Palmer, like Bunning was better than Reuschel in the 2-5 best seasons, but by less than a win a year, and over the course of their careers, Reuschel was better, 115 DRA+ to Palmer's 113 (in a similar number of innings, Palmer had 3781 tIP. He had the one great year, and was very good from 1973-81 and 1985, 1987-89. That's a record that not a lot of pitchers can match.

4. Jack Quinn SP (4) - I'm giving him credit for 1916-18 where he was pitching (quite well) in the PCL after the Federal League went belly-up. He gets a big leverage bonus for his nearly 800 IP of relief work at a LI of 1.26. Without any PCL credit I still have him between Bridges and Grimes.

5. Willie Randolph (5) - I have him very slightly ahead of Sandberg. He scores a 98.6 in my system - Sandberg gets a 95.8, Jeff Kent was at 87.0 through 2005, Lou Whitaker scores 113.9, Bobby Grich 120.1. Just to give some benchmarks. Among non 2B with a similar score we have elected everyone. Willie McCovey scores 98.7, Ernie Banks 96.0. Dave Concepcion scores 77.7. I'm comfortable placing Randolph here, especially in light of our election of Nellie Fox, who scored 81.8.

6. Tommy John SP (7) - Tons of career value. I would probably be sick to my stomach if Jim Kaat (who did very well in the Veteran's Committee balloting this year) got in and John did not. On the surface (career W-L) they appear similar, but when you adjust for everything, they aren't close. I have John as similar to, but better than Burleigh Grimes - about 800 more translated IP, at a 106 rate instead of a 104 rate. That's more than enough to offset Grimes peak edge. I get John somewhere between Eppa Rixey/Red Faber and Grimes on the continuum. He's over the in/out line for me. I also give no extra credit for his poineering the surgery - someone had to be first.

7. Urban Shocker SP (8) - Vaulted in 1981, with 1918 war credit (he was having a great year), and an adjustment for the AL being much better than the NL during his time. He was a great pitcher, peak guys should really look closer at him. He'd be a no brainer without his illness, which should not impact a peak vote.

8. Tommy Bridges SP (9) - Unspectacular peak (although he would have won the 1936 AL Cy Young Award if it had been invented), but a lot of career value. War credit helps nudge him above Trout and Leonard. He could obviously still pitch when he left for the war, and was still good when he returned for a short time. I give him 2 years of credit at his 1941-43 level.

9. Gavy Cravath RF (10) - Either he was a freak of nature, or there's a lot missing. I vote for the latter. Check out his thread for deeper discussion of the specifics, including a great analysis from Gadfly. He's the kind of guy we were hoping to catch when we started this project.

10. Pie Traynor 3B (11) - The more I look, the more I think we missed on this one. He gets another bump this week. I don't agree with rating Boyer above him. Traynor far outhit his 3B peers relative to Boyer and his.

11. Thurman Munson C (12) - Better than I realized - just a hair behind Freehan. Better career D, better career O, but Freehan played more and had the higher peak. Very, very close.

12. Ben Taylor 1B (13) - Consider me convinced that he was really was a great hitter. I was underrating him.

13. Dave Stieb SP (17) - The best pitcher in baseball between Seaver's demise and Clemens' rise (1982-85). He got a very nice peak, a decent length career (3070.3 tIP). Very similar to Bridges/Pierce/Walters. Walters had the better 'best-year' but I think Stieb had more 'very good' years and beats him by a hair.

14. Dave Concepcion SS (14) - Better than I realized, and was really hurt by the 1981 strike, which occurred during his best season (and a season where the Reds had the best record in baseball, but missed the playoffs). Still no Trammell or Ozzie, but a very good player indeed. We could do worse than induct him.

15. Wally Schang C (15) - Basically the best MLB catcher between Bennett and Cochrane/Hartnett. As valuable a hitter as Campanella or Bennett. Defense was questionable.

16. Bert Campaneris (16) - He slipped off my radar and he shouldn't have. .470 OWP, in an era where the average SS was at .372. Long (9625 PA) career as well, and a good fielder (62 FRAA). System says to rank him ahead of Concepcion pretty clearly, but I haven't been able to bring myself to do it just yet.

17. Graig Nettles (18) - Vacuum cleaner at 3B, one HR title, another runner-up. He was a better hitter than Brooksy, almost his equal with the glove. Almost as long of a career, and while he wasn't as good as Robinson, Brooks had plenty of room to spare. I had him too high, but still think he belongs.

18. Rusty Staub RF (19) - Finally pushed him higher, I like career candidates with nice peaks, and from 1967-71 Staub was one of the best players in baseball. Looking at Jose Cruz made me realize I had Staub way too low.

19. Dave Bancroft SS (20) - Let's see. You've got a SS with a .498 OWP, during an era where the average SS has a .414 OWP. He's also one of the 15 most valuable defensive shortstops in history to this point. He had a reasonably long career as well, though his in-season durability wasn't great. Think that's a valuable player? I do.

20. Buddy Bell 3B (21) - Just a hair behind Nettles - arguably as good as fielder (though about a season less at 3B) and a hair behind as a hitter also. Who realized at the time that he was one of the best players in the game from 1980-82?

21. Darrell Porter C (22) - A lot higher than I thought he'd be. His 1979 was an MVP caliber season - of course it came in the one year between 1977-81 that the Royals didn't make the playoffs, so he finished 9th behind guys like Mike Flanagan and Gorman Thomas. As a catcher, in 679 PA, he had as good of an offensive season as the LF/DH that won the award. I could see ranking him almost as high as Freehan. I wish I'd looked at this sooner - I'd like to see him get the close look that Ron Cey got. Porter was definitely a better player.

22. Charley Jones LF (23) - A superstar of the early NL/AA. I give full credit for his contract debacle / blacklisting, which I consider a product of his timeframe, and not something that would hinder any modern player. I have dropped him this week. I still think he was great, but I think I'd been giving him a little too much credit for his AA seasons.

23. Jim Fregosi SS (24) - I like middle infielders that can hit.

24. Don Newcombe SP (25) - Gets color-line and Korea credit. Moving up this week after a few tweaks in the system adjusting for fielding behind him.

25. Bucky Walters SP (26) - Big years, good hitter for a pitcher, career kind of short though. Basically tied with Newcombe.

26. Ken Singleton RF (27) - I've got him as very similar to Henrich. Singleton lasted longer (ever after accounting for the war), but Henrich was a much better fielder. Henrich had more power and Singleton more OBP. But when you add it all up, their overall value was quite similar.

27. Burleigh Grimes SP (28) - Faced pretty steep competition (.520 RSI), so his 256-226 RSI and 107 ERA+ understates his record somewhat. I wouldn't be against his election at this point - his hitting puts him over the top. The updated fielding adjustments in WARP drop him a little in the rankings.

28. Phil Rizzuto SS (29) - Lost 3 prime years to WWII. Great defense, and a huge year in 1950 also.

29. Norm Cash 1B (30) - Wow, history books, where have you been hiding this guy? .671 career OWP! +109 fielding runs! That puts his defense at a level with Roger Connor, George Kelly and Frank McCormick among the all-time greats. He has more FRAA than Vic Power, for example.

Dick Redding - he was good, but I think we are overrating him. I can't see how he's better than Grimes.

Pete Browning - would be by far our biggest mistake. Hack Wilson would be an equivalent electee.

Tony Perez - In my top 50, but I don't see how anyone can vote for him over Ben Taylor.

Newbies:

Frank Viola - Did very well. Was clearly better than Morris (.797 PA to .699). He's about as far ahead of Morris as Morris is ahead of Hooks Dauss or Johnny Antonelli (with war credit). Not quite a HoMer, but I've got him ranked 64th, just behind Vic Willis. Bill James NHBA rankings, which heavily weigh peak have him at #45 and a JAWS scoring system would have him #51.

That 1990 season was hidden gem. 16 post-1893 HoM starters never had that good of a season. He was pitching in front of awful defense (despite the team being good), and his bullpens killed him, yet he managed a 141 ERA+ (166 DRA+) and led the league in IP by a comfortable margin. I'm not voting for him, but I'm surprised the peak guys aren't giving him more support. He may have been 2nd to Clemens from 1987-1990. I haven't had time to run the numbers on Dave Stewart, but I can't imagine he'll show up as good as Viola. Two more seasons at his 1992-93 (not his best years) and he'd be a very serious candidate.

Lance Parrish - Very good player, not too far behind Bresnahan. Not the hitter Freehan was, but probably better behind the plate. I still like Munson better, but I'll admit it's close. IMO he was more valuable than Puckett.

Kirby Puckett - I don't see it. He was a good player, but the career is short. With war credit Dom DiMaggio was just as valuable. Take Reggie Smith, for example - 219 more PA; a .653 OWP compared to Puckett's .602. Sure Smith didn't play his entire career in CF, that's why his peer-OWP was .542 compared to Puckett's .518, but he's still well ahead. Puckett had 48 FRAA, Smith -1. Still not enough to close the gap, IMO. Smith isn't on my ballot, and I don't see how Kirby can be.

I think he's basically Earl Averill, but not as good, and without the minor league credit. And I thought Averill was a questionable choice at best.

Don Mattingly - I wish I could support him, but I can't. One of my favorites as a kid. He played RF in September 1982 as a call-up in the first game I ever went to. But he just wasn't good enough for long enough. I'm actually surprised by how close I have . . .

Kent Hrbek - ranked to Mattingly. Hrbek has more career FRAA and a similar OWP in about 1 season less of playing time, and they were direct contemporaries. Mattingly had the higher peak, but he also had the lower valley.

Jeff Reardon - I have him exactly tied in Pennants Added with Dave Righetti. He had a very solid career.

Dave Righetti - My all-time favorite pitcher. Was (along with Randolph, Dawson and Raines) my favorite player when I was growing up. That 1986 was a heckuva year, equivalent to 190 starting IP with a 179 DRA+. His 1981 strike adjusts pretty well too (158 tIP, 173 DRA+). Was probably worked too hard from 1984-86, and wasn't really the same pitcher after that. He actually pitched OK in 1995 when he returned to starting (108 ERA+, 96 DRA+) at age 36.

Tom Henke - If he'd pitched more, he'd be an easy HoMer. His DRA+ (154) is second among those I've figured to Mariano Rivera (201). Koufax is next at 153. Unfortunately he only threw 1209.7 translated IP, which is 171 fewer than Quisenberry, who had a short career. Henke's career wasn't short, he just didn't throw a lot of innings. But he was amazing when he was out there. I've got him ranked between Reardon/Righetti (including his starter years) and Quisenberry on the relief ace list.

Thanks, Howie, we needed that. But it's still only 18 ballots, and we're still in the "mid-week" doldrums. With Juan V. adding in two names we haven't seen on ballots in a long time, there are indications that we could tie or break the record for most different candidates voted for.

from Joe Dimino's post #51:
Lance Parrish - Very good player, not too far behind Bresnahan. Not the hitter Freehan was, but probably better behind the plate. I still like Munson better, but I'll admit it's close. IMO he was more valuable than Puckett.

Well, it doesn't seem that Yest is this kind of voter, but I wouldn't be surprised if Mattingly ended up high in the ballot of someone who PHoMed Hughie Jennings as soon as possible, especially if he pays some attention to Dan R's standard deviation work.

21. Darrell Porter C (22) - A lot higher than I thought he'd be. His 1979 was an MVP caliber season - of course it came in the one year between 1977-81 that the Royals didn't make the playoffs, so he finished 9th behind guys like Mike Flanagan and Gorman Thomas. As a catcher, in 679 PA, he had as good of an offensive season as the LF/DH that won the award. I could see ranking him almost as high as Freehan. I wish I'd looked at this sooner - I'd like to see him get the close look that Ron Cey got. Porter was definitely a better player.

Juan V, thanks for the shout-out. It's certainly true that the 1980's AL was an exceedingly difficult league to dominate, but that's not nearly enough to put Mattingly over the top. My system doesn't see him as anywhere near electable. Once you get into the 20th century standard deviation corrections are rarely more than 8%, and that's typically just in expansion years.

Joe Dimino--since you are so vigilant about war credit and clearly seem to understand that it's harder to find a good hitter at SS than at 1B, what do you think of Pesky? He was monstrous in 42 and 46...not enough career for your liking even with credit?

Seriously?!? Since I've been with the project, ballots have been submitted with names only. What would constitute a comment? One word? A sentence. Do sentences need to be full or is note form sufficient? Do all names need comments or would it be considered enough for a simple opening statement for the entire ballot?

2001 ballot. W& W rule the day, who should join them with a call from the hall? Methodology in brief: The system used for my ranking entails a little bit of everything including WS, WARP, OPS+/ERA+, positional adjustments, even some contemporary opinion. Once that is assembled I try and make other changes to metrics when deemed fit. My hope by adding in all this material is to get the most complete picture, a composite worthy player. The results of this work tend to favor prime/peak players over career types but that is not 100% tried and true.

1. Lou Whitaker (-). Someone else posted a fine description of Sweet Lou. He started off as more of a defender, through the years became a solid hitter while his defense declined but not to terrible levels. Quality pick, glad to have him.

2. Dave Winfield (-). The career that went on, and on, and on…Excellent some years, value there but not the peak other people had. Always lost that helmet when legging out those doubles and triples.

3. Dick Redding (2). Career was long – decent peak along the way. Outstanding fastball in his day according to James/Neyer book. So he didn’t get into the Hall of Fame; maybe the information collected by HOF committee wasn’t pertinent to Redding’s prime years. He deserves some WWI credit, thus patching up a bald spot in his prime years as 1918 and 1919 were affected.

4. Norm Cash (4). Interesting debate with the Perez/Cepeda/Cash comparison. There appears to be fielding value on his end than the others at 1B.

5. Tommy Leach (5). Combination hot corner/centerfielder could field a little, hit a little. Second all-time in inside-the-park home runs to Wahoo Sam Crawford. Someone else stated he was uniquely valuable in his particular era and I agree he meant more in the particular era he performed in.

6. Bobby Bonds (6). Even with the constant trades, drinking problem and whatnot his combination of speed/power made him a very valuable player. He wasn’t the next Mays, or as good as his son. Five tools on display.

7. Reggie Smith (7). The other Reggie wasn’t half bad. Played some CF before moving down the defensive spectrum, hitting along the way. Not real durable but lots of value when in the lineup. Should we add in the year in Japan at the end of his career? I don’t currently.

8. Tony Mullane (9). Old time pitcher who threw plenty well, a good hitter to boot. Had some playing time issues since he missed seasons due to being blacklisted. He’s amongst the best of his era when accounting for the time outside of baseball due to conflicts with different leagues. Goes on the all-Nickname team as well.

9. Bob Johnson (10). His peak might not be as high as others but at the same time for 13 years in the majors he has the highest floor of anyone. By floor I mean what can we reasonably expect from him in terms of performance. During those 13 years you knew exactly what you got with Bob Johnson – nothing less, rarely more. I guess my system rewards consistency as well as greatness. WARP numbers like him, WS not so much. Over his career his teams underperformed Pythag W-L by 15 games so he loses some Win Shares there.

I’m afraid he’s between the two voting factions. He doesn’t have the peak but was effective longer that the high peak, short career players. He doesn’t have the career but was at a higher production level than the low peak, long career players. Either way, he stacks up nicely compared to the other LFs hanging around.

Indian Bob got a late start (one deserving of 1-2 years of MiL credit), played on bad teams in ballparks that favored pitchers, and got left out of post-war ML baseball while he was still doing well at age 39. 10 years of top 10 performances in OPS+, 106.6 WARP1 for 13 years with no padding on the front or back end.

I guess they were right. While others shot to stardom, collected an MVP, and faded from sight, along rolled Bob Johnson, punching the time clock with excellence far from the spotlight. Forgotten while playing, lost in history. Somewhere Joe Medwick laughs at the fact he got in while his contemporary remains in limbo.

10. Roger Bresnahan (8). Work was good behind the plate, also shagged some flies some years. This was in centerfield so he must have been somewhat athletic out there. Fills a short gap during the turn of the century where we have lacked a backstop.

11. Pete Browning (23). Nine years top 10 in OBP, a pretty important skill in the high error era in which he played. Nine years top3 in BA, dude could rake with the best.

12. Mickey Welch (11). Another one of those annoying 300 game winners. Was it due to luck, run support, bad opponents? Still a feat to accomplish, sometimes I need to remind myself that and not totally overlook Smilin’ Mickey.

13. Alejandro Oms (12). The body of work included Negro and Latin American play. Another career lost in translation since the Cuban time can be tricky to compute.

14. Bucky Walters (13). Short time NL prime starter who has the numbers downgraded a little by the defensive support which was above normal standards. Still high quality and heck this is the backlog.

15. Willie Randolph (14). Nice long career for a 2nd basemen, someone who did many things well without ever doing that one thing at an other-worldly level. In season durability balance with career longevity. I have him much better than where Fox was – not as good as Whitaker.

Top 10 Returnees: Stieb (#27), Charley Jones (#19), Perez (#33), Duffy (#21). Stieb I see as the best of a bunch that are borderline from the 80s on the pitching end. Charley Jones gets some of that blacklisted credit, just not enough. Perez, were starting to get filled with 60s NL players, he’s not as good as many we’ve already enshrined. Duffy’s great 1894 sticks out but the rest of the body doesn’t quite push him high enough.

New guys: Parrish (#18), Puckett (#47), Mattingly (#80-90). Lance did well with when hitting, stayed around a long time, accumulated value. Puckett, I might move up some slots due to the postseason, we’ll have to see. Donnie Baseball, it was fun for a couple of years.

Seriously?!? Since I've been with the project, ballots have been submitted with names only. What would constitute a comment? One word? A sentence. Do sentences need to be full or is note form sufficient? Do all names need comments or would it be considered enough for a simple opening statement for the entire ballot?

Yes, I'm very serious, Ryan. As to what constitutes a valid ballot, just follow the lead of the ones that nobody is crying and moaning about.

Whether or not we have been lax in challenging or allowing ballots with very little (if any) commentary, it seems prudent that we should all simply follow the constitutional ballot procedures. Last year's troubles showed that precedence is not a guarantor for acceptance of non-standard ballots.

Ryan, I think it's clear that Rusty's ballot has been queried as too sparse in its commentary while yest's ballot, though not heavy on commentary has been questioned for its logic, not the length of its commentary. If you can say it quickly and you support the pithiness with a ballot header that explains your general reasoning or you offer some other kinds of information, I don't think there's going to be a big problem. For further clarification see Rick A's ballot, which lacks a header but does include a variety of information to help understand his voting patterns. Of course those candidates who are placed in particularly controversial locations (Mattingly on Sunny's ballot, for instance) might merit more commentary than others.

>No offense to yest, but I feel like this is a line from a Joe Morgan chat:

>>first of all I'm from NY and I saw Mattinly play doing all sorts of things that don't get included in his stats

In defense of yest, the spelling error was yours and you removed his funny "where is your accent from" comment. :-)

I don't agree with yest's ballot, but he's been good about clearly stating his reasons when called on it. As a nonconsensus voter it would be good if he posted a prelim to prepare us for his ballot, but many of us don't post prelims.

I agree with your sentiment, though. A lot of Mattingly fans want to heap all sorts of intangibles on a guy who career coincided with the longest championship drought in his franchises history. I'm sure he is a "class act" but getting away from those types of arguments is one of the big attractions of this project.

That was my thought. Sunny is usually pretty chatty, but as a fellow minnesotan I recognize the unsubtle sarcasm. :-)

I like the ballot comment requirements. It creates a little barrier for entry. Earlier in the project we were worried that we'd be flooded with new voters at this point who were only interested in inducting their childhood heroes. We haven't had that problem with that. I'm not sure if its due to the comments requirement or not, but I think it helps.

Anyhow, its only Friday. Plenty of time for ballots to be amended with comments. :-)

1) Whitaker--Not as good as Grich, but still a bad HoF oversight. A significant gap ahead of Randolph and Fox. Hit well enough to be a useful DH, but played a great second base.
2) Winfield--Overqualified as well, big peak seasons plus a long career. Win Shares does hate his D.
3) Bob Johnson-- WinShares says C fielder, warp thinks he’s considerably better than that. Very high assist totals from LF. Played CF for a terrible 1938 A’s team, also a little bit of 2B and 3B. On the whole I think the record indicates that he was actually a good defensive player. I also suspect that his WinShares suffer from playing on some horrible teams. May have struggled trying to get a break, tough to grab playing time on the great A’s teams earlier in his career. Never did anything but mash despite late ML start at age 27. 1934-1942 is a HoM worth prime in my view. PHoM in 1970.
4) StiebThe dominant pitcher during a tough time to dominate. Lack of support made his dominance hard to see. Great year for example in 1985 (171 ERA+, 265 IP), and went 14-13. 1982-1985 each year was top 3 in both IP and ERA+. 1981-1985 warp3: 8.5, 9.9, 9.1, 9.7, 9.4.
5) RandolphTremendously underrated. Lifetime OBP of .373 plus great defense and longevity looks good to me. Funny how someone could be so good for so long in NY and get so little credit.
6) Rizzuto--The man lost his age 25, 26, and 27 seasons to the war, right after a very good season in 1942. One of the best fielding shortstops of all time. A 93 career OPS+ is strong for a grade A shortstop, not weak. Great peak season in 1950 (11.4 warp3). PHoM 1977.
7) Puckett--Short career, otherwise likely would be a no-brainer. Even so was always an MVP candidate with pop in the bat, great D, great hustle.
8) Concepcion--Grade A+ shortstop and could hit some too. Weak hitting at the beginning and end, but above average during prime 1973-1982. Warp3 prime: 10.7, 10.2, 10.2, 9.7, 8.8, 8.7, 8.3, 8.0. Note that Win Shares is conservative in assigning fielding credit to the great fielders. PHoM 1994.
9) Nettles--Great fielder with quite a bit of pop in his bat. Best Warp3: 10.7, 10.2, 8.9, 8.4, 8.2. PHoM 1995.
10) Perez--Interesting, most people like his career, but wait a minute…he was playing third base from 1967-1971…there’s a peak there. PHoM 1997.
11) Charley Jones--A masher whose prime was destroyed by the blacklist.
12) John McGraw--Dominant player when healthy.
13) Stephens-- PHoM in 1961. Looks underrated to me. Best years by Warp3 10.2, 10.1, 8.9, 8.5, 8.0, 7.8. Another player short on career length, but I like the prime.
14) Bobby Bonds--PHoM 1986. 1969 -75, 77 are all very good to MVP candidate seasons. Career 130 OPS+ plus good speed, a good enough fielder to play some CF. Is only lacking longevity.
15) Cey--I’ll take the plunge on Cey. I like Elliott, so indeed Cey shows up on my ballot. Power, walks, and defense at 3rd…wish the Mets didn’t spend 40 years looking for that. He didn’t look like a ballplayer but he was a good one. Best Warp3 10.5, 9.6, 9.2, 9.1, 9.0, 8.9. Interesting that Hack and Groh are in while Elliott and Cey are out, I have them in the same bunch. PHoM 1997.

Bresnahan—not in my top 100, though I did vote for him a long time ago. Not enough catching time to bump him way up.
Browning—after his great season in the 1890 PL at age 29, not much. Not in my top 100.
Redding #20.

Well, there is a question of enforcement.
I figure whatever Murphy says, goes. Works for me.

But I (and most others) figured the same was true last time around about his "no ballots after 8 pm" comment. Yet it took a week before that was 'enforced' - and not in a way that in any sense directly backed up the validity of that specific comment.
At this point, I'm not sure what power the latest enforcement effort has.

And this from a guy who would be happy if he DOES have clear enforcement power, simply so there's no further confusion.
I hope this gets clarified long before Monday, either way. Let's try to work this out.

There is zero question of enforcement as long as I'm doing this job from now on. If anybody else wants to test my resolve, be my guest.

But I (and most others) figured the same was true last time around about his "no ballots after 8 pm" comment. Yet it took a week before that was 'enforced' - and not in a way that in any sense directly backed up the validity of that specific comment.
At this point, I'm not sure what power the latest enforcement effort has.

Unlike the ballot I didn't allow of Joe's because he hadn't notified me earlier that he would be late, the Commish triggered a loophole based on precedent that our Constitution didn't fully flesh out. That loophole has now been plugged.

I frankly don't have much problem trusting John with this. I don't think it's fair to him that the situation is devolving to this. Let's form a ballot committee and entrust it with the power to resolve ballot disputes now.

Pete Browning – His election would be a mistake. Sure, he could hit, but really not any better than guys like Cravath, Castillo, Howard, and Arlett, all of whom had longer careers and better in-season durability. Browning played 90% of his team’s games in only 3 seasons, 80% in 7 seasons.

Charley Jones – Better than Browning, but my line for 19th century guys starts with Duffy, Welch, Van Haltren, and Long.

Tony Pérez – # 18.

Other new arrivals:

Don Mattingly – # 32. He had a nice peak that didn’t last quite long enough.

Both clearly HoM quality. Whitaker was more valuable when he was in the lineup, taking position into account, but Winfield had the longer career. On the balance, Whitaker ends up higher. Winfield had a very impressive late career comeback after missing a year with an injury.

3. Wally Schang Correcting for the 154-game schedule and the WWI-shortened seasons, has as much career value as Freehan in as many games, at least by Win Shares. Schang's lesser season-by-season totals is because in-season catcher usage was lower during his time than afterwards. Is it fair to penalize him for that? A case where WARP is not as flattering as WS, perhaps accounting for Schang's lack of support.

4. Tommy John Career pitching candidate in the mold of Faber or E. Wynn. Kaat is also similar. I can see how some voters would not put Tommy John within a mile of their ballots; on the other hand, John's decent showing in the most recent mock BBWAA election shows that some level of support exists.

5. Willie Randolph Most similar 2B: Frisch, N. Fox, Kent. I tend to buy the Fox ~ Randolph argument, now having had both in the top 5 of my ballot.

6. Brian Downing This is a vote that will raise eyebrows, I'm sure. I have double-checked the numbers, and did not find any errors or compelling reasons to change my methodology, although the subjective strangeness of the outcome makes me question most (1) whether the career value portion of DH-era players ratings should be docked because careers tended to be longer (2) whether being among the best DH in a season is worth as many peak points as I'm giving. He ends up so high from a combination of every quirk in my system breaking in his favor: catcher "bonus" for the catcher years, treatment of DH as a position in itself, population-based timelining, and consideration of league strength/affect of DH in a league.

7. Jack Clark Most similar players: R. Smith, Burkett, Heilmann, Cepeda, Singleton A "tweener" career that was good enough for long enough to land on my ballot.

8. Rusty Staub Looks like career >> peak to me. Will not help my consensus score, as similar players are the very very good types who don't make the HoM (or the HoF, unless they attain magic numbers like 3000 hits). I should call the bats that crowd the middle to bottom of my ballot "quadruple-A HoM candidates". Why did Dw. Evans get elected to the HoM, and not Staub?

9. Norm Cash Among better 1B most seasons 1960-1971, and occasional all-star level. More consistent than Cepeda, but less playing time per season.

10. Orlando Cepeda Among better 1B most of years during 1959-1967 and occasionally all-star level; career totals padded 1968-1974. Cepeda, Cash, and F. Howard are a set of near-exact contemporary "bat" candidates who played in the 1960s, a tricky era in which to judge the potential bottom-half-of-the-HoM "bats".

11. Lance Parrish Had two or three excellent seasons, but his career was greater than his peak. An offensive plus who caught many games; 5th all-time in HR as a C; played in strong leagues. These credentials help place him on my catcher-heavy ballot.

12. Elston Howard Multiple years of all star play at catcher; 1961-1964 "workload" also noteworthy. A peak that few catchers have attained, but very little outside the peak.

13. Reggie Smith Among better RF most years during the 1970s; respectable career totals; played CF in addition to RF. One stat that I've tabulated for fun is career Win Shares times career WS per plate appearance. It's not a perfect stat, but does correlate well with HoM selections. In this measure, Reggie Smith is the highest unelected player. That doesn't prove that he's a HoMer, but does suggest searching for reasons for his lack of support: (1) he's a 'tweener' between peak and career; (2) he missed a lot of playing time so that while his rate stats were always well above average, they don't show always lead to high season-by-season totals for those who look at things that way (3) he split defense among several positions; some may be rating him as a RF and neglecting his CF play.

14. Mickey Vernon Did have some all-star type seasons at 1B, but basically a "career" candidate all the way. Credit for two years missed to WWII, and belief that pre-expansion 1950s baseball had some of the toughest competiton of all time, based on teams/population. Among top contenders for "Hall of Fame chance hurt by WWII", as listed in Bill James' NBJHBA.

15. Ken Singleton Multiple all star-type seasons 1975-1979; MVP level 1977 season. Very durable in 1972-1983 prime; not much outside this. List of similar players suggests that he will not make it to the HoM easily, if at all.

Kirby Puckett is 17th, and is likely to make my ballot in the future.

Mattingly falls short. Career through age 26 is about 50th all time. Players who start out like Mattingly often have difficulty keeping up the pace- is it a question of "old player's skills"? Through age 26, Mattingly had a career OPS+ of 150 in 3078 PA. Three years later, Will Clark through age 26 had a 148 career OPS+ in 3088 PA.

I have Bill Byrd a touch above Redding, and Sol White as the unelected NeL candidate that I rate the highest.

Bucky Walters's case has issues of quality vs. career length, and WWII level of competition. Ultimately not enough high-quality seasons for my taste.

Bob Johnson: on the basis of his major league record (WWII seasons must be appropriately discounted), definitely not a HoMer, therefore, supporters must be giving him extra credit. Sam Rice is a more deserving late starter.

Considering the context of thin and weak competition, lack of durability, and career shortness, there is less than meets the eye in Browning's case. I disagree with recent assertions that careers were short during Browning's time. Except insofar as the contraction in 1892 terminated some careers that weren't major-league quality to begin with, my data shows no shortness of careers in Browning's time. Just among CF born within 2 years of Browning, Ryan, Tom Brown, and Hoy had significantly longer careers (in team-seasons of games played.)
WS does not like him as much as WARP does.

Charley Jones was better than Browning, but beware those AA years.

I like Dave Stieb a lot, but Stieb, Cone, Key, and Saberhagen are birds of a feather. Stieb doesn't rise enough above the rest.

Tony Perez has some similarities to Staub. I prefer Staub, who hit better over more PA.

In defense of yest, the spelling error was yours and you removed his funny "where is your accent from" comment. :-)

thanks I was worried that might be taken badly (after all I'm the worst speller here or at least the worst of those who don't use spell check)

I don't agree with yest's ballot, but he's been good about clearly stating his reasons when called on it. As a nonconsensus voter it would be good if he posted a prelim to prepare us for his ballot, but many of us don't post prelims.
I did mention some time a while back ago that Mattingly most likley would be first on my ballot

I agree with your sentiment, though. A lot of Mattingly fans want to heap all sorts of intangibles on a guy who career coincided with the longest championship drought in his franchises history. I'm sure he is a "class act" but getting away from those types of arguments is one of the big attractions of this project.

and for that you can thank the fact G**r*e S***nb****R thought that teams where the 5 best players are HoF like and the 4 worst are H.o.Shame like would win you a championship

Steinbrenner belongs in the H.o.Shame himself for other reasons --the baseball hall of shame, beginning with Dave Winfield - Howard Spira. For you youngsters here is the first excerpt from Google's catalog.
>>
“My father really should have worn a condom,” Spira said at his sentencing. “He did not deserve Howard Spira as a son.”
<<

On the other hand, thanks to Steinbrenner the team was commonly a strong one during the third pennant drought. Somewhere just before my time things went awry, perhaps at management level, from George Weiss to CBS. One of my third grade classmates liked the Yankees. He wasn't the only one but he was the only one named "Michael Burke". I suppose he was the second baseball executive I learned after Commissioner Eckert. ("When he became commissioner, Eckert had not seen a game in person in over 10 years." --Wikipedia)

btw, 2 of 8 ex-Commissioners of baseball are in the Hall of Fame: Landis and Frick

1. Dean PHoM 1976. 1975 reevaluation of great pitching peaks put him on my ballot for the first time. NHBA #25.
2. Walters PHoM 1968. Nice peak – 3 WS Cy Youngs, 1 runner up.
3. WinfieldPHoM 2001. Nice career, some peak but almost no black ink - tied with Neifi Perez.
4. Duffy PHoM 1912. I’ve been looking at how players on the ballot compare with the median level of already enshrined HoMers using WS. Duffy would be in the top half using 5 consecutive seasons, 10 consecutive seasons and 8 best seasons.
5. Whitaker PHoM 2001. NHBA #13. Career pick with much more peak than Beckley.
6. Rizzuto PHoM 1995. 1993 reevaluation moved him up. Stark says he is overrated, but Stark didn’t give him any war credit. NHBA #16.
7. Bresnahan PHoM 1928. SABR Dead ball era committee has him #1. No MLB catchers between Ewing and Hartnett is not being fair to all eras.
8. Cooper, W PHoM 1942. Returns to my ballot in 1995 after 44-year hiatus. His peak was during a thinly recognized period. Willis may have been better, but his era is more strongly represented.
9. Burns, G. PHoM 1996. Came close to making PHoM during the 1929-1932 trough. Probably should have, better late than never. His 10-consective year peak is above the HoM median as is his 3-year non-consecutive.
10. Leach PHoM 1926. Teddy bear.
11. Singleton PHoM 1997. Not many players on ballot with 3-32+ and 6-27+ WS seasons.
12. Bando PHoM 1994. NHBA #11 (Boyer #12)
13. Stieb PHoM 2001. 2 WS Cy Youngs, 2 times runner up.
14. Howard, E PHoM 1995. NHBA #15
15. Murphy 4 consecutive seasons with 30+ WS
16. Cravath PHoM 1967. mle credit where credit is due.
17. Mays, C PHoM 1997. His era could use another pitcher. A quality pitcher we are overlooking. NHBA #38.
18. Newcombe PHoM 1998. Giving more war and mle credit (1993). NHBA #46.
19. Puckett
20. Mattingly
21. Willis, V PHoM 1941.
22. Browning PHoM 1912.
23. Parker Do the first base line Dave. NHBA #14.
24. Howard, F
25. Berger
26. Rosen If Moore, why not Rosen? If a great 5 consecutive season peak were the only measure we considered, Rosen would have been elected in 1964.
27. Bonds, Bo Barry’s dad was pretty good.
28. Munson NHBA #14
29. Staub
30. Veach
31. Evans, Dw I know he is a HoMer, just holding his place for the PHoM.
32. Perez Not enough good seasons to be higher. Jayson Stark says he is overrated.
33. Cepeda
34. Tiant
35. Cash, N
36. Doyle PHoM 1930.
37. Chance, F PHoM 1921.
38. Jones, C – I have voted for him (4) times – 1898 thru 1901. When I dropped him in ’02, he received only 2 votes. Ed Williamson was on 18 ballots; Arlie Latham drew more support with 3 votes. My 1898 ballot comment – “9. Jones. Two-year hold out probably costs him a couple places”. Nobody was giving credit for not playing back then, as we hadn’t tackled issues like war and mil credit yet. If as many voters had treated his hold out years like he was an all-star back then as are doing so now, he may have been elected by 1920. His 1988 top-10 finish pushed me to re-evaluate for 1989 and give him holdout credit. A reconstructed PHoM based on if I thought then like I think now, would have put him in my PHoM during the trough years of 1929-32 if not 1921.
39. Grimes
40. Ryan, J
41. Van Haltren Do 3 years of slightly below average pitching really merit Van Haltren this much more support than Jimmy Ryan? Walked 16 in stellar pitching performance 6/27/1887.
42. Redding Fared well in the Cool Papa’s survey, as did Spots Poles.
43. Elliott
44. Brock not enough peak to be higher
45. Pinson
46. Smith, Reg less peak and less career than Brock
47. Sutter I like him better than Fingers.
48. Arlett
49. Traynor
50. Nettles
51. Cicotte Better character and a couple more good years made possible by better character would have made him a HoFer if not a HoMer.
52. Gomez More peak than Tiant.
53. Bell
54. Murcer
55. Evers
56. Randolph Before we elect Willie, take a closer look at Evers.
57. Cey
58. Mazeroski
59. McGraw Best 3B of the 90’s
60. Colavito

I am using Dan R.'s numbers for hitters, but subjectively modified to reflect my own personal biases (less emphasis on peak rate, more emphasis on peak total seasonal value, slightly less emphasis on positional STDEV, more catcher bonus).

I am generally against giving players credit for seasons in which they were eligible to play in the big leagues but were passed up by big league franchises, except if a player was obviously blocked by a star and trapped by the reserve clause.

Pitching-wise I am open to reliever candidacies, and I strongly reward peak seasonal totals.

1. Dean- By far, the best 3-year peak available on the ballot.
2. Winfield- Winfield spent the prime of his career in very difficult parks for a righty fly-ball power hitter (96 career home OPS+, 103 away OPS+). A component park-effect adjustment, even only a partial one, would increase his peak value substantially.
3. Whitaker- Drops below Winfield due to the platooning and the benefit he received from his home park.
4. McGraw- Sure, playing time matters, but a .500+ OBP overrides other concerns. Probably deserves an intangible "leadership" boost, too.
5. Browning-Widely thought of as an all-time great by both his generation and the one that came after; the defense and baserunning and durability drop him down this low.
6. Bresnahan- Greatest catcher of his generation. Fine CF, too. Catcher durability from that era is all messed up, and that causes him to be underrated in many folks' systems.
6. Rizzuto - War credit. Could be swapped with Pesky depending on how you handle the war, but I'll go with the devil I know.
7. Concepcion - The market is not stupid, and if the entire NL played small, good-field no-hit shortstops, there was probably an environmental factor that induced that- turf + an emphasis on speed? A great shortstop for the 70's game.
9. L. Gomez - Gets a small boost for not relying on the defense.
10.C. Jones- Minimal blacklist credit; a reasonable argument can be made that Jones was indeed planning on jumping the team, and was therefore partially responsible for his fate.
11.R. Smith- Minimal Japan credit.
12.Pesky- Huge war credit. Even if you don't credit him at '42 +'46 levels, how do you handle him? His peak clearly comes during the war. Any attempt to approximate his true wartime value makes him ballot worthy.
13.Bancroft- Since I use Dan R.'s system, I'm very pro shortstop. A heck of a lot better than Nellie Fox-granted that being better than the HoM's biggest mistake isn't a compelling argument for election, but then again, he's 13th on the ballot
14.Tiant- According to Dan's preliminary pitcher #'s, he's the best modern pitcher candidate.
15.Nettles- Hellacious 3B defense and a nice bat to go with it. Not enough worse than Brooks Robinson to be this far behind him in the balloting.

16-20 would probably be E. Howard, Puckett, B. Johnson, Cicotte, and W. Randolph, not necessarily in that order.

Redding, I don't trust the MLE's
Tony Perez just wasn't that good. You have to a be a really super corner guy in 60's-70's ball to be Meritorious.

2001 Ballot
My ranking system heavily weights 5 year peaks, but additional career value can add up, too. I rely primarily on the uberstats, with about a 60/40 split between WARP and WS. I’m rather liberal with war and minor league credit. I use a catcher bonus of up to 10% based on the proportion of a player’s career spent behind the plate.

I think all of the WARP #s I’m using were up to date as of the beginning of December. I have already run the numbers for all “serious” eligibles (i.e. >200 career Win Shares) through the 2006 election.

1) Dave Winfield
I have him in the mid-50s all-time among position players--between Hank Greenberg and Roberto Clemente. Over 400 Win Shares and 130 WARP3 make him an easy choice to top another career-centric newbie in Whitaker.

2) Lou Whitaker
He didn’t have much in the way of a discernable peak, but he was consistently good for a long time. Career totals very similar to longtime teammate Trammell. I have Trammell a little higher due to a better peak.

3) Tony Perez
Perez is not terribly dissimilar from Staub—they’re almost identical by Win Shares. His peak according to WARP is substantially better than Staub’s (46.6 to 40.5) and he’s got more career value to boot (109.5 to 102.7), so Tony gets the edge.

4) Rusty Staub
By Win Shares he looks like a solid HoMer: 358 career, 145 top-5 consecutive. By WARP he’s a bit more marginal: 40.5 top 5 WARP3 isn’t super, but 102.7 career is respectable.

5) Frank Tanana
His WARP totals are very good (111 WARP3 career, 47 top 5 seasons), but Win Shares has him as run of the mill. I lean a little more towards WARP in my rankings so Tanana is in the top half of the ballot this year.

6) Willie Randolph
He put up very good career value (310+ WS, 115+ WARP3), especially for 2nd baseman, but his 5-year peak is nothing special (42 WARP3, 114 WS). Whitaker is not terribly far ahead of him.

7) Bucky Walters
A very good pitcher…I’m not convinced that he needs to be docked for the superb Reds defense more than the DTs already do.

8) Ben Taylor
The lack of data from his prime years makes all of this highly speculative, but I’m ranking him as if he was Keith Hernandez with a little less peak and more career (career totals of around 105 WARP3 and 320 Win Shares; with top 5s of 46 and 135, respectively).

10) Dick Redding
2nd best NeL pitcher of the deaball era, I’m hoping we’ll give him his due eventually.

11) Kirby Puckett
More of a peak than the two other top newcomers, but the unfortunate truncation of his career holds him back. I think he’d be #1 on this year’s ballot if he continued for 3-4 more years in the rabbit-ball era of the late ‘90s. He’s also hurt a little, in comparison to Whitaker & Winfield, in that their ML careers started around age 20/21; whereas Puckett's rookie year being at age 24, he didn’t get to add 2-3 filler years at the beginning of his career.

12) Bobby Bonds
Similar in career value to Indian Bob (93 WARP3, 302 WS). 149 WS in top five consecutive seasons is impressive, though not unprecedented.

13) Graig Nettles
Although his peak numbers are a little lower than Bonds & Singleton, career totals are a little better…Nettles ends up somewhere in the middle.

14) George Van Haltren
GVH seems to be an obvious HoMer if you just look at Win Shares (344 career, 133 top 5 consecutive—before season length adjustments); however, WARP (especially WARP3) is not nearly as favorable: 86.5 career, 36.4 top 5.

15) Ken Singleton
Similar overall career and peak value to Bonds. Both have 302 WS, just over 90 WARP3; top 5s of about 150 WS, 46(BB)/48(KS) WARP3

52) Lance Parrish
65) Dave Steib—I don’t see a huge difference between him and a lot of other backlog pitchers.

Returning Consensus Top 10 Not in My Top 100:Roger Bresnahan—He’s neck and neck with Thurman Munson…which means not HoM-worthy in my estimation.Pete Browning— He takes a real beating in the WARP1-3 conversions. I have voted for him in the past, but right now I’ve got him falling farther and farther behind the real ballot contenders.

The last 10 days of Tom's life have included a car crash (mister air bag stings, but he is much more friendly than mister steering wheel or mister dash board!), a lonnnng trip college visit for child #3, a holiday with family, and my dad surviving a couple of heart attacks.

Other than that, pretty mundane. So,

2001 Ballot, copied from the discussion thread

Review of Hanrahan’s value system: career value with a fairly high replacement level (slightly below average). Something like RCAP adjusted for defense and league strength, or WARP3 minus 2.5 wins per full year, or WS minus 11 per year adjusted for league quality. Small credit for pitcher “peak”, none for hitters. Some subjective estimating of ability across time and place. I rank the long primes higher than most of us.

(x) indicates where I voted for them last ballot
[y] indicates their consensus rank from last ballot

1- Dave Winfield {new}
Most years leading MLB in seagull kills
2- Lou Whitaker {new}
Sweet!
3- John McGraw (3) [22]
Dominant 9 year prime. Provided huge advantage over every other MLB team at third base.
4- Willie Randolph (4) [4]
Many years as a fine overall performer.
5- Roger Bresnahan (5) [9]
Best MLB catcher of his era, the era before, & the era after. Position flexibility not a minus.
6- Bob Johnson (6) [13]
Very good long prime; clearly better over a dozen year stretch than our other backlog OFers. One very good MinorLg year of credit also.
7- Reggie Smith (7) [21]
Too fragile for peak (big seasons) voters, not long enough career for career voters. But guys, he won lots of games for his teams. Lots. More than all of the men below him.
8- Bucky Walters (8) [11]
Faced strong opponents, pitched real well, hit real well too.
9- George Van Haltren (9) [16]
Speed and on-base skills made him very valuable in his day. Add in a long career, including pitching, and you get a HoMer.
10- Frank Chance (10) [70]
A great player on great teams. Better hitter than Gavy Cravath AND Charley Jones..
11- Bill Monroe (13) [51]
Dominant in his day.
12- Kirrrrbeeeeee PUCKETT! {new}
In another park besides the HHHdome, he was only very good, not great at all. However, post-season credit gets him on my ballot.
13- Dick Redding (12) [5]
Great pitcher according to the anecdotes. Less great by MLEs. I split the difference.
14- Luis Tiant (14) [26]
Small bonuses for few unearned runs and great post-season stats.
15- Dave Stieb (15) [7]
Best at a time when it was tough to dominate.

Voting Method: I generally try to examine how long and high a player’s peak was and go from there. I don’t believe in any one evaluation system, but I am comfortable looking at WS, WARP, EQA, OPS+, and anything else that seems reasonable to find a general statistical consensus. Also, I have a hard time voting for position players with a peak of less than 5 years or guys who were just good to very good for a long time. I try not to penalize guys who simply played too long . With pitchers, I tend to be more impressed with long, peakless careers. So, for example, I have voted for Eppa Rixey and Tommy John, but not, say, Sam Rice or Harry Hooper. I give bonus points for being the best player in the league at your position without worrying too much about what position that was or league discounts. I give extra special bonus points if the player was arguably the best player in the league for any period of time. Finally, I try to achieve a certain amount of positional and era balance to my ballot.

1. Dave Winfield. Long, productive career. He looked better at the time than his statistics do now, but he's easily qualified for election.

2. Lou Whitaker. I worry that I have him too high here, but he easily meets our standards for 2B.

3. Bob Johnson. I have a hard time ranking the dozen or so OFs clustered in the 300 WS/100 WARP range. Johnson, though, seems slightly more meritorious than the rest: Career OPS+ 138, 10 times in AL top 10. EQA .308 compares favorably to other OF candidates. Also had a good glove.

4. Tommy Bridges. Despite finishing in the AL top 10 in innings five times, he was not much of a workhorse. When he did pitch, though, he was very good. He finished his career with just fewer than 3,000 IP and his top ERA+ season is 147. In his favor, he’s probably missing 360 or so innings from 1944 and 45, and he had six seasons in which his ERA+ was between 140 and 147 (and ten seasons in which he was in the top 10 in the AL.)

5. Larry Doyle. Arguably the best offensive player on the best offensive team in the league 1911-1913. Doyle had a career OPS+ of 126, and was consistently in the NL top 10 in HRs and slugging pct. He also won an MVP award and was an 8-time STATS NL all-star. By all accounts played extremely hard and captained the team for several years. Let’s call his fielding erratic and note also that his teams won a lot of games with his erratic fielding.

6. Dave Bancroft. Great glove, above average hitter, walked a lot. Had some durability issues, but ended up with over 110 WARP(1) and had a couple of 10+ WARP seasons, including one (1921) where one could reasonably argue that he was the NL’s MVP.

7. Luis Tiant. An odd career. Had the misfortune to have his best season the same year as McLain won 31 games. I’d argue Tiant was the better pitcher that year--though it’s close. Was then injured for a few years before coming back and having several excellent seasons for the Red Sox in the mid 70s.

8. Tommie Leach. Reevaluated onto the ballot. Played two important defensive positions well and generated a decent amount of offensive value while doing it.

9. Dave Stieb. Career is a little on the short side, but another one of the peak/prime pitchers who had a couple of years when they could be considered the best pitcher in the league.

10. Phil Rizzuto. Great glove, probably not as good a hitter as Bancroft. Missing essentially 4 seasons at age 25-28.

11. George J. Burns. Rarely missed a game, got on base a lot, could field and run, had 3 MVP caliber seasons (1914, 1917, 1919) and averaged close to 27 Win Shares a season for a decade. It isn’t a stretch to think of him as having been best OF in the NL from 1913-1920, which is impressive in any era and league. I’ve never been convinced Roush was the better player.

12. Tony Perez. Separates himself from the 1B pack by having a pretty good glove at 3B for 5 full seasons. Hung around long enough to accumulate almost 11,000 PAs, but his rate numbers would look better had he retired at age 35.

14. Bob Elliott. Best 3B in the NL from 1943-50. Consistently ranked in the top 10 in the NL in WS and OPS+ over that period. Above average glove.

15. Urban Shocker. If you spend enough time looking at Bridges, Tiant, Walters, and Stieb, sooner or later you need to account for Shocker. So here he is. Got a late start, but was a very effective pitcher literally until the year he died.

Required disclosures:
Willie Randolph. I’d elect him to the Hall of the Very Good.
Dick Redding. I’ve had him on and off the ballot over the years. He got bumped off this week, but I think he’s a solid candidate.
Browning and Jones. Too many questions, too many other candidates.
Roger Bresnahan. I’d like him better had he played more games at catcher or if there was more evidence that he was a good catcher.

Listen, I'm Bancroft's biggest backer on this board, but as Bill James would say, if Dave Bancroft was the 1921 NL MVP, I'm a lug nut. Rogers Hornsby had one of the greatest seasons in MLB history that year.

Fair comment. Rajah was of course the best player in the NL in 1921 and almost any other year between 1917 and 1929. Bancroft was probably the most valuable player on the best team in the NL in 1921. WS shows Hornsby at 41 and Bancroft at 31, so let's say instead that Bancroft had an MVP-type season.(Though MVP voters later in the decade were not above deciding some years that guys like Hughie Critz were more deserving of the MVP award than Hornsby, so who knows how an actual MVP vote would have turned out...)

I post this during a brief stop-over between one trip and the next. With three pitchers moving off of the top of my 2000 ballot, this year’s ballot is very infielder-heavy.

Review of my ranking methodology. I base my rankings on three measures: career, total value above average, and peak rate, which I calculate in both WARP1 and WS, adjusting WS in various ways for pre-1930 players. Giving equal weight to each system, I rank players against their immediate contemporaries (grouped by the decade in which they had the most value). I then calculate percentage value above or below the approximate in-out line for that decade (which is set based on number of ML and NeL teams and population factors) and use that percentage to integrate the decade-by-decade rankings. Then I make subjective adjustments. I have recently become concerned at the impact of the very-low-replacement level of both WARP1 and WS on my rankings. I include a rate stat in my system, but I am not confident that it compensates sufficiently for the overvaluing of pure playing time by the comprehensive metrics. I haven’t had time to revamp my system to adjust replacement level yet, but one of my subjective adjustments identifies players who are likely to be overrated somewhat for this reason. I have begun using Dan R’s wins above replacement as a tool for this purpose also. Long-career, strong-defense infielders have benefited from this. I have figured out how to scale Dan R’s WAR to fit neatly into my system, so I hope use his analysis to strengthen my rankings more systematically soon.

1. Dave Winfield (n/e) % = 1.2205. Not inner circle, not as good as any of the big 4 from the class of 1999 (Brett, Yount, Fisk, Ryan), but nevertheless an obvious HoMer and an easy #1 this year. I am guessing that he was better defensively than the metrics show, and without atrocious defense his peak is strong. His career is obviously outstanding.
2. Lou Whitaker (n/e) % = 1.1457. There’s a case to be made that the stats overrate Whitaker somewhat because of platooning and because of home-road splits, and he has a rep of being a natural not into conditioning and a space cadet, etc., but even using his road stats he was a better hitter than Willie Randolph, and even without a conditioning regime he was on the field consistently more than Randolph was, and he was a smart enough hitter to play to the strengths of his home park. With Randolph right on the cusp of election, Whitaker is obviously in. There’ll be some debate about him, but at the end of the day he’s an easy choice.
3. Dave Bancroft (6). % = 1.0463. If he could have stayed in the lineup more, we’d have elected him long ago, as he was a slightly better ballplayer than Sewell with a longer career. But having few seasons of 145+ games hurts him.
4. Alejandro Oms (7) % = 1.0407. Oms has a long, strong primes without a great peak, like most of the top candidates in my backlog pool, such as Fingers, Bancroft, Randolph, and Leach.
5. Willie Randolph (8). % = 1.0609. Should go in this year. Excellent defense, above average offense sparked by his on-base skills, and a long career. The only knock on him is mediocre durability, which kept him from putting up huge seasonal win share/WARP totals. The fact that my ballot is now crowded by infielders of similar durability (significant for career, uneven in season) suggests that this is a hazard of the positions, and one for which the electorate should adjust a bit more than it is doing. He’s similar to both Bancroft and Leach.
6. Tommy Leach (9). % = 1.0381. Outstanding player for a long time. Andrew Siegel’s brief analysis of his case is excellent, and Dan R’s war2 shows that his play in relatively high SD leagues was still very valuable.
7. Tommy John (10). % = 1.0308. He doesn’t have a great peak, but his 12-14 year prime is about as good as any eligible pitcher’s, and he adds another 4-6 good years on top of that. He is the Jake Beckley of pitchers, and he ranks about where Beckley ranked before his recent election.
8. Rabbit Maranville (11) % = 1.1502. An all-time great defensive shortstop who hit enough in his prime to play at a consistent, all-star level. Current leader among eligible players in career WARP1 even without war credit for 1918 (which he also merits), he is the only long-career shortstop between Wagner and Appling. RCAP study indicates that my system overvalues him, but he still has a strong career argument.
9. Buddy Bell (12). % = 1.0349. Better than I realized. Both WARP and WS love his defense, and he’s on the good side of the in-out line by both metrics in my system. Very similar to Nettles, but his defensive excellence appears to have lasted longer. I have ranked him below what his percentile ranking suggests because I am not exactly sure where the in-out line for the 1980s will end up. Right now that in-out line is quite low, but it could rise as I finish evaluating that decade’s candidates.
10. Graig Nettles (13). % = 1.00. Great defender, decent hitter for a long time. Looks identical to Bell in overall merit, and I prefer both to Nellie Fox. It’s fitting that it has worked out so that they are arriving on my ballot together. I might resort to the archaic practice of splitting my #15 vote rather than putting one on the ballot and one off.
11. Lance Parrish (n/e). % = 1.0227. A profile rather similar to Nettles: long career at a high defense position, low BA but good power. He wasn’t as good defensively as Nettles, however, relative to his position, so I’m starting him below Nettles. Parrish could move quite a bit before it’s time to vote, as his case is compelling me to reexamine the case of Thurman Munson.
12. Bus Clarkson (14). % = 1.00. Lots of discussion of his new MLEs has ended with his value looking about like it did before the revision, in my view. His career profile reminds me a lot of Darrell Evans, with a little more defense a little less offensive peak (though with regression it’s hard to judge peak). Both he and Evans were very good hitters all through their 30s because they really developed their “old player skills” of plate discipline and power in ways that offset their decline in other areas. It’s also the case, of course, that he’s similar to Perez, another power hitter who shifted from 3B to 1B in the course of his career. Perez shifted over at 30, though, while Evans made the shift at around 35, and Clarkson would have shifted over at 35-37. His fielding, then, gives him the edge over Perez.
13. Dave Stieb (15). % = 1.00. I agree with Eric C. that he was the best pitcher in his league for the first half of the 1980s. This is a weak crop of pitchers, but I think it was also a hard time on pitchers. My review of pitchers has set out to make cross-era head-to-head comparisons more feasible by using normalized innings pitched. Without normalization, Stieb’s prime is as good as that of any eligible pitcher. With normalization, he rises to the top.
14. Charley Jones (17). % = 1.00. Back on my ballot after the 1999 star glut has mostly cleared. I give him 2+ years credit for the blacklisting. The only player on the ballot with an argument to have been the best player in baseball at his peak. Flipping him with Bonds this year. We are seeing more and more players who are about Bonds’ equal from the 1970s and 1980s: Jones stands out a lot more among his contemporaries, I think. I am seeing him closer to the Jimmy Wynn model.
15. Bobby Bonds (16) % = 1.0184. Similar to Jimmy Wynn, but not as strong a peak.

16. Burleigh Grimes (18). % = 1.00. Biggest beneficiary of my pitcher review. I found two mathematical errors in my calculations that had knocked him significantly downward. The correction of the errors has him looking very similar, if not superior, to Rixey and Faber. I am moving him up significantly, though I’m not quite ready to put him onto the ballot, and I don’t think he is superior to Stieb or John in any case. Had a strong 14 year prime, in which he was a huge workhorse, but his value before and after his prime was minimal. John’s better career pushes him ahead, and Stieb’s 14-year career is better than Grimes’ 14-year prime.
17. Kirby Puckett (n/e). % = .9687. My system sees him as on the outside looking in, but I am inclined to conclude that it unfairly penalizes him a little bit for not having a decline phase. It’s easy to compare him to Dale Murphy, Bobby Bonds, and Jimmy Wynn, because all of them had 12 year primes, and the three who played longer were all but worthless outside of those 12 years. I’d take Puckett over Murphy. Murphy’s durability advantage comes out to 4 games a year. Puckett was better defensively. Murphy has a higher offensive peak, but not by all that much, and Puckett was a better hitter overall because Murphy tailed off so badly. Murphy’s tailoff doesn’t put him quite as far behind Puckett as you might think, though, because Kirby was nothing special with the stick until he learned to hit for power in his third season. For career, Kirby and Bonds senior are equal offensively. Puckett is ahead on durability and defense, though I think Bonds could have been more valuable defensively if he had played the first half of his career for a team that didn’t have Willie Mays and Garry Maddox lined up to play centerfield. Bonds had a slightly better peak, though, because he put his offensive and defensive best performances together a bit better than Puckett did. Also, Bonds showed he could shine _anywhere_,while Puckett has the baggydome question mark. Of course, Puckett has the team leader intangibles that Bonds manifestly lacks. Anyway, I’m starting Puckett between Bonds and Murphy.
18. Tony Perez (19). % = 1.0327. Dan R’s replacement-level study drops Perez somewhat in my estimation. I’m grouping him more closely now with Cash and Staub.
19. Norm Cash. (20) % = 1.0098. A dark-horse candidate. Below Bell and Nettles on league-strength considerations.
20. Dale Murphy (21). % = 1.0020. Similar to Bobby Bonds and Charley Jones, relatively short career, high peak outfielders, with very good defense at their best. He’s a bit behind those two because his prime was shorter, and his peak was only a little higher. His peak rate is actually lower than Bonds’. He has excellent seasonal win share totals, but that is partly a factor of durability. Durability is good, but WS too-low replacement levels make durability overrated by many voters.
21. Rusty Staub (22) % = 1.0457. My system argues for a higher placement than I have given Staub, but few players that I have ranked have added more career value in a series of below-average seasons, so I believe my system overrates him. He was legitimately outstanding during his peak in Montreal, however, so he should be in the mix. A career-slice approach suggests that the contemporary “bat” players to whom he is closest in value are Bonds and Norm Cash, so I am ranking him just a little below the two of them. His profile is also a lot like Jimmy Ryan’s, actually, which provides another justification for ranking him about here, just a half dozen spots ahead of the best outfielder from the 1890s still eligible.
22. Gavvy Cravath (23). % = 1.00. Not as well-rounded as Roush, Oms, Minoso, and Wynn, not as strong on peak as Keller, Kiner, or Jones. But still a tremendous hitter whose value has been overlooked. Slips a little bit as a result of recent discussions, which have made me fairly certain that he does not have a hidden peak in his AA years, but was a pretty similar player then to what he was in Philadelphia. I am therefore having a harder time seeing what makes him better than Bob Johnson.
23. Luis Tiant (24). % = 1.0024. My review of pitchers puts my assessment of him more into line with Joe Dimino’s. Tiant was highly effective, but not especially durable for his time, and not notably more effective than the more durable Stieb. His extended prime was no better than Tommy John’s. I still have him worthy of election, but I’m no longer pushing his candidacy by voting for him.
24. Joe Tinker (25). % = 1.00. Looks like Ozzie Smith, but with only 3/4 of Ozzie’s career.
25. Bob Johnson (26). % = 1.00. Back on my radar
26. Reggie Smith (27) % = .9791. Dan R’s numbers bring him back into my potentially electable group. His case is still much weakened by seasonal durability issues and by a Dw. Evanseque divide between fielding peak and batting peak, but he was an above average player for a long time, and hardly ever had a bad year.
27. Dom Dimaggio (28). % = 1.00. Likewise.
28. Jimmy Ryan (29). % = 1.00. The best of the remaining 1890s outfielders.
29. Herman Long (30). % = 1.0192. His case is of the same sort as Maranville’s, but he was not as brilliant a fielder and had a shorter career, so when Maranville drops to where Long was, Long drops to the all-time in-out line or thereabouts. Dan R’s numbers on Long are not encouraging, so he slips a bit his year.
30. Dick Redding (31). % = 1.00. None of the additional, reliable data provided by Gary A. shows Redding to be pitching at a level that looks worthy of the HoM. None of the years reputed to be his best are part of this additional documentation, but the more data that shows him looking like a pitcher who was a bit above average in the NeL and, therefore, about average in the ML, the more his case is weakened, in my view. I’m not dropping him out of the picture altogether, but I’m putting him, for the moment at the bottom of the borderline-in group of players. It seems probable to me now that, unless the trend in evidence turns, he will drop further. It’s very hard for me right now, for instance, to accept that he was probably better than Urban Shocker and Don Newcombe. My pitching review hasn’t gotten as far as the Negro-League pitchers, but I’m doubtful it will help his case. I hope I will have time to do that review before he is elected. If it doesn’t happen this year, there should be a couple years of breathing room.

Seven of the returning top 10 are not on my ballot, though several are close. Redding and Walters are not the starting pitchers most deserving of support, nor are Johnson and Perez the most deserving at their positions, though they would not be bad choices. Bresnahan is clearly the best at his position for his era, which gives him a reasonable case, but he just didn’t play enough, even adjusted for the standards of his time. Browning and Duffy would be mistakes. In general, I think the electorate is undervaluing long-career, high-defense infielders who lack the gaudy win share seasonal totals that win the admiration of peak voters. But win shares seriously undervalues these players because (1) its batting replacement level is WAY too low, so players get too much “showing up credit,” which is easier for outfielders to accrue than infielders and (2) its range of fielding values is too compressed, so that excellent fielding is undervalued. This infielder group is most disadvantaged by this mistake, so my ballot is filling up with players of this type, as I wait for a seismic shift in the electorate. More detailed comments on the returning top 10 left off my ballot follow.

Dick Redding. See #30 above.

Pete Browning. % = .8920. Yes, he was an outstanding hitter, but his eye-popping years were all in the weakest major leagues of all time (excepting the UA), he was not an asset on defense, he was not durable within seasons, and his career was short. He is not near my top 50 eligibles. My system sees him as having a case similar to Frank Howard and Rocky Colavito. They have arguments, but they are nevertheless clearly on the outside looking in. There was a bit of talk about “our biggest mistake” election. The only two choices we have made that I see as clear “mistakes” are Bill Terry and Sam Thompson, with Thompson being the bigger of the two. Browning is distinctly less qualified than Thompson. All three players were overrated, I think, because they have very gaudy batting statistics that aren’t as meritorious as they appear.

Roger Bresnahan. % = .9435. Agreed that Bresnahan was the best catcher of his era and the only catcher from the aughts with a legitimate case. If he hadn’t become a player-manager, he might have logged enough playing time to be a HoMer. I don’t see him as a terrible choice by any means—he was an impact player—but among unelected stars of the aughts I think the infielders Leach, Evers, Moran, and Tinker all have better cases.

Tony Perez. See #18 above.

Bucky Walters. % = .9387. Walters’ prominence in the rankings derives from his peak value. His peak was strong, but outside of his peak he was not much better than an average pitcher. His hitting compensates somewhat, but his last excellent years need a discount for wartime competition. If I were ranking purely on best seven consecutive years, he might make my ballot, but he would still be behind Ron Guidry and Dave Stieb.

Bob Johnson. See #25 above. I’m actually rather pleased to see Johnson in the returning top 10. He was unfairly neglected for many years after he first became eligible, and I was among those who didn’t give him as much support as he merited. I’m not advocating his election, but I don’t see him as a bad choice. If I had a pHOM, which I might get around to creating once we are caught up to the present, I would guess that Johnson would have a good shot at entry during a backlog year between 2007 and 2012.

Other New Eligibles Meriting Comment:

Don Mattingly % = .9462. Just a little below the 95% mark that would get him onto my ranking board. Great peak, but just not enough to go with it. His peak rate is #10 or #12 among 1980s position players (WS & WARP, respectively), which would make him electable by that measure. His total value above average is down around 22, which is borderline at best, and his career is well outside the top 30. He has a case, but to be elected on a five-year peak alone, you have to be the best player in baseball, and Mattingly wasn’t quite that good.

Tom Henke. % = .8460. He was a highly effective relief pitcher, but he just didn’t pitch enough for the HoM. His usage was always rather light, and he was not all that highly leveraged, especially in his Toronto years. Adjusting his career IP by his leverage gives him a career leveraged IP total of only 1212.7. His contemporary Lee Smith has more raw IP than that, and Smith, as has already been mentioned, is himself a borderline candidate. Henke bests Smith on DERA, 3.00 to 3.43, but that’s not enough to make up for the difference in time on the mound.

Andy Van Slyke. A bit below the line for a full work-up. If we did a Hall of Merit for most quotable players, Van Slyke would surely be in. A favorite of mine for being a part of the great Pittsburgh outfields of the early 1990s.